Magic Monday
Mar. 12th, 2023 11:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ecosophia
It's almost midnight, so we can proceed with a new Magic Monday. Ask me anything about occultism and I'll do my best to answer it. With certain exceptions, any question received by midnight Monday Eastern time will get an answer. Please note: Any question received after then will not get an answer, and in fact will just be deleted. (I've been getting an increasing number of people trying to post after these are closed, so will have to draw a harder line than before.) If you're in a hurry, or suspect you may be the 143,916th person to ask a question, please check out the very rough version 1.0 of The Magic Monday FAQ here. Also: I will not be putting through or answering any more questions about practicing magic around children. I've answered those in simple declarative sentences in the FAQ. If you read the FAQ and don't think your question has been answered, read it again. If that doesn't help, consider remedial reading classes; yes, it really is as simple and straightforward as the FAQ says. The picture? I'm working my way through photos of my lineage, focusing on the teachers whose work has influenced me and the teachers who influenced them in turn. Last week's honoree, Theodor Reuss, got the idea and many of the teachings that went into the Ordo Templi Orientis from this man, Carl Kellner. Kellner was an Austrian chemist and a successful industrialist who made a tolerably large fortune by creating and patenting a new process for manufacturing wood pulp for paper. He was also, as the photo shows, something of a dandy; let it never be said that all occultists are dowdy!
In his off hours, he was an active Freemason and a student of occultism. A member of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, he also studied with European students of our old friend, Paschal Beverly Randolph, and with several Hindu gurus and a Sufi shaykh. He drew up plans for an occult order that would pass on Randolph's sexual gnosis using rituals like those of Freemasonry. Before he could complete the plan, however, he was struck down with a sudden unexplained illness, recovered somewhat after a long hospital stay, and then suddenly died. (There's some reason to think that he'd been experimenting with kundalini yoga -- not the modern, simplified, safe version, but the old robust teachings that can drop you dead in your tracks if you don't have a guru watching you on a daily basis.) Since I'm not a member of the OTO, my only connection with any of that story is that one of my teachers was taught by a student of a student of a student of Kellner; still, thin as it is, the connection is there.
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***This Magic Monday is now closed. See you next week!***
Interesting channeled works from the 20th century!
Date: 2023-03-13 07:31 am (UTC)You have previously replied with this to a question about Crowley:
"As for the Book of the Law, channeled volumes handed down by discarnate intelligences were a dime a dozen in the 20th century. Crowley's contribution to the genre doesn't strike me as especially interesting."
Could you please elaborate on that, giving us a few of the channeled volumes you do consider interesting and worth seeking out (aside from the Cosmic Doctrine, of course -- love your articles about it, by the way)?
Cheers!
Re: Interesting channeled works from the 20th century!
Date: 2023-03-13 06:27 pm (UTC)James Merill's The Changing Light at Sandover is seriously worthwhile as literature -- arguably the best piece of channeled literature so far, in fact -- but I don't use it as a source for occult teachings.
Re: Interesting channeled works from the 20th century!
Date: 2023-03-13 06:34 pm (UTC)Speaking of dubious tomes -- is Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine worth reading for esoteric insights? Or is it all bogus?
Thanks!!
Re: Interesting channeled works from the 20th century!
Date: 2023-03-13 06:45 pm (UTC)Re: Interesting channeled works from the 20th century!
Date: 2023-03-13 06:54 pm (UTC)Oh, what version of A Vision should I get -- 1925 original or revised?
Re: Interesting channeled works from the 20th century!
Date: 2023-03-13 07:19 pm (UTC)If you can, you might want to get A Vision and Related Writings, edited by A. Norman Jeffares; that includes several other crucial essays, especially "Per Amica Silentia Lunae," which are helpful for understanding the system.
Re: Interesting channeled works from the 20th century!
Date: 2023-03-13 07:39 pm (UTC)