The Bornless Ritual & The Holy Guardian Angel

Syncretic Egyptian / Graeco-Roman magic from the collection of texts known as the Papyri Graecae Magicae.
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Nashimiron
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Re: The Bornless Ritual & The Holy Guardian Angel

Post#31 » Wed Sep 27, 2017 10:52 am

It's purpose is pretty clear, it's an exorcism.

Crowley and the G.'.D.'. and all the other folks were definitely under some sort of Guidance when they engaged with this material. As we now know from the texts we have access to that they did not, even when they were getting it wrong, they were in a different way right.

For example Crowley's misinterpretation of the Samaritan Iabas as Ia-Bez - in the PGM we find two more Akephalos writes where the Osirian headless power has indeed been claimed by Bez. But there's no suggestion that this was coming in the Stele of Jeu.

Also, the Setian thing was a mistake (by Goodwin I think) which we now know is not as wrong as it seems, the Divine Names used seem to relate to Set in other rites.

The Stele of Jeu, however is directly referred to Osiris so I take that as it stands (everything you need is stated plainly in the PGM and the rites are ready to use as-is), with the understanding that he has appropriated some of Set's Names. But thats the PGM all over.

As to the Samaritan Gnostics - one of the Gnostic texts states that the Gods have no bodies - only heads which are the stars. It also says that the ultimate God dwells somewhere beyond the stars, or where there are no stars - so Headless, not to mention Bornless. So another mistake which is kind of correct but not through the route they were aware of.

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nipha333
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Re: The Bornless Ritual & The Holy Guardian Angel

Post#32 » Wed Sep 27, 2017 8:48 pm

So I found a qoute in Don Webbs Seven Faces of Darkness. He claims that Preisendanz supports the idea that the headless one is Set. However when i went searching for Preisendanz text called "AKEPHALOS" The only thing I could find was a picture of the title page on Instagram. Had my wife leave a comment asking about english translations and the OP responded that there is no english translation at this point but the statement by Webb is confusing because his understanding of Preisendanz idea was that it was Osiris. The instagram OP also supplied a link to an english summary he wrote of the german text.
So this brings up several questions.
the first is Webbs credibility in this comment and wether or not Webb can read german anyway. And secondly, is he merely citing a text he knows his english readers cant consult to back up his ideas, or did someone familiar with german (i.e. flowers) that he works with give him a confused idea of the book which he didnt read for himself?
The third question, and most important for me is how far do we trust preisendanz interpretation anyway? He may have been a good translator, but how deeply did he understand graeco egyptian hermetic/gnostic ritual? Also of importance in considering this is Preisendanz blind spots when he wrote Akephalos, papyrology is an ever evolving field because we are constantly finding new material, and are constantly gaining access to things never before translated. Obviously these new finds have changed perspectives on several ideas already, indeed several times this has been the case. Also I would point out that this statement by Webb is basically a sidenote and only really matters if you think his ideas need Preisendanz concurrence in the first place. Needless to say, my personal opinion is that Preisendanz was not a magician therefore his opinion in this matter gets a 50/50 rating to begin with.
Still i wish there was an english edition of Akephalos, with the importance that this ritual has taken on in modern views of magick, Im surprised none of the publishing houses has done this.

All in all, its a good article, though I disagree with the conclusions of Preisendanz:

http://sublunar.space/2017-09-preisenda ... s-god.html

Also relevant is this article:
http://sublunar.space/2017-08-the-six-names.html
Last edited by nipha333 on Wed Sep 27, 2017 9:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
'Goetic Magic … if properly understood would regenerate Western magic and underline its immense cultural significance, on a level equal to any spiritual tradition in the world.' -JSK

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nipha333
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Re: The Bornless Ritual & The Holy Guardian Angel

Post#33 » Wed Sep 27, 2017 9:26 pm

Astar_Mundi wrote:It seems to be used to "Juice" up the Magical Act by modern magicians.

Sort of like the Wizarding equivalent of the workout shake that weightlifters take before training.


This is why IMO, people have negative experiences, they are using it totally out of context for something it isnt intended for.
'Goetic Magic … if properly understood would regenerate Western magic and underline its immense cultural significance, on a level equal to any spiritual tradition in the world.' -JSK

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Simha
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Re: The Bornless Ritual & The Holy Guardian Angel

Post#34 » Wed Sep 27, 2017 9:59 pm

The ritual gives you authority over spirits, as exorcism rituals do.

I have worked with the ritual a few times. Once I finish what I am working on now (It will take another month or so), I plan to try a month where I perform the ritual every night outdoors to see the results.

When I asked my spirit allies about this ritual, they said that it is causes a metaphorical death and a rebirth. This makes sense as the ritual is connected to Osiris.

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Magister C
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Re: The Bornless Ritual & The Holy Guardian Angel

Post#35 » Thu Sep 28, 2017 12:22 am

Quite simply stated, yet crowley expresses it riddled with hebrew alphabet puzzles and false syncretism of 10 different gods for what? The only logical answers is he was fucking with everyone or had major blind spots. And for the record i have a lot of respect for crowley. Its not his fault the GD gave him the kabbalah addiction, and its also not his fault that most of the papyri that enlighten these philosophies were not available in languages he read, or at all at the times of his writing. But they are blind spots none the less. He said himself several times "my personal religion is egyptian" ... so why use the satan serpent example with eden etc (of a faith he himself claimed to hate) when Set as the Bata serpent is what is actually relevant to the thelemic teachings(egyptian)? Blindspots.


I do not disagree with anything you have said here, I also do not use the Judaic Christian God names when using Goetia. I'll touch on that a little later here. Crowley was a man of his time, and yeah, he didn't have access to the recent scholarly material we are fortunate to have today, so I think he made the best of what he had at hand.

The Victorian era would have been a difficult time for a free thinker to have been born into, Crowley's life was marred from a young age with the perverted misery of the gospels and its sanctimonious indoctrination, imagine having to deconstruct the oppressive edifice of these mores in those times?

Even when he made headway into making progress with his esoteric interests, he joins an order believing these guys were in contact with the 'secret chiefs', and finds a bunch of ex masons and the same ol shit God he was trying to get away from.

Of course the GD are taught not to see any name of God as culturally specific, but rather a generic name for the creative intelligence behind all things, (if you believe in that kind of thing), still that's the way it was, Agrippa and pseudo masonic rituals, a smattering of eastern mysticism, and all filo faxed into the Kabbalah and other similar practices. Of course the fact that the young Crowley drank to excess, used drugs, gambled and fucked whores didn't help his rep to much either. The stuffy limitations of lesser minds would not hold such a man for long.

I feel the most important contribution the man made was not the prolific amount of writing he produced, or his Kabbalistic rambles, but the fact he created a battery of Gnostic techniques, to empower his ritual workings. He also understood the so called self, was mostly an accretion of social and genetic accidents, that have nothing to do with the essence of the true self.

He was often LHP in the way he lived, and then he would absorb his consciousness into Samadhi as well, I don't think he could ever figure out where he truly stood on this. Even his essay in Magick Without Tears' is not as clear cut as people believe.

Indeed The Bornless Rite is better understood today, and yet I have used it both for HGD work and for Goetic work, often I use the rubric and then simply use an ad-lib evocation to summon a spirit. Despite people going on about the ritual not meaning this or that, or whatever, it has never been a problem for me using it for a variety of reasons. Set is easily called using it for example, in fact as you intimated, its perfect for that purpose really. Then there is a GD ritual that uses part of it to call Thoth. If something works for the purpose I intend it to, then with all due respect to scholars, I don't give a fuck.

Like Crowley, I learned the Kabbala for the reasons of classification, not for any religious purpose (one could just as easily use the eight rated star of Chaos for this purpose), but merely for the practical reasons of ritual construction, most of the more obvious associations are valid-for example Mars Red-Tobacco -Sword, Stimulants, and a number of deities-its handy to have dozens of correspondences in your noggin, its just useful, having said that, I understand that I am older than most people on this board, and when I was a young man, it was pretty much mandatory to learn this stuff.

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nipha333
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Re: The Bornless Ritual & The Holy Guardian Angel

Post#36 » Thu Sep 28, 2017 1:11 am

Magister C wrote:
The Victorian era would have been a difficult time for a free thinker to have been born into, Crowley's life was marred from a young age with the perverted misery of the gospels and its sanctimonious indoctrination, imagine having to deconstruct the oppressive edifice of these mores in those times?

.


I definitely understand that it was not a matter of who gives a shit Ill make it up, and mostly circumstantial. It is impossible to imagine his upbringing for me, as I was raised by a weed growing deadhead who to this day refuses to wear socks and shoes lol. I also had a very involved grandmother who was a bibliophile to the extreme, so where he had drawbacks, I have had benefits. I do have a high level of respect for him despite the blurring of thelema with his kabbalistic rambles as you called them.

Magister C wrote:

He was often LHP in the way he lived, and then he would absorb his consciousness into Samadhi as well, I don't think he could ever figure out where he truly stood on this. Even his essay in Magick Without Tears' is not as clear cut as people believe.


I feel like the confusion here is compounded by the fact that Crowley himself wasnt clear on what left or right consisted of. Then this confusion about which thelema is is further compounded by the fact that the Crowley section in the one reasonable exposition on the matter, Flowers Lords of the Left Hand Path is kind of superficial and one can tell pretty quickly that as knowledgable as Flowers may be he has never actually worked crowleys system, but only read it.
'Goetic Magic … if properly understood would regenerate Western magic and underline its immense cultural significance, on a level equal to any spiritual tradition in the world.' -JSK

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raum215
Magister Templi
Posts: 4790

Re: The Bornless Ritual & The Holy Guardian Angel

Post#37 » Thu Sep 28, 2017 10:44 am

Crowley is honest that he is pretty much throwing everything at the refrigerator to see what is magnetic sometimes.

There is a lot of his work and journaling that never sees the light of day. I used to live in a house with some of it before it was hauled off to archives after my mentor passed.

His own love of mathematics and engineering was part of why he embraced gematria. It was part of his explanatiom that the narrative of religion is not his real concern. He uses it because it gets his brain where it needs to be, it gives him a magical language. He says this in Temple of Solomon the King, his discourse on the Outer Order Golden Dawn rituals from the Equinox. The last article in the series is Very telling. He also surmises it clearly in MTP.
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I YHVH do all these things.

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Listener
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Re: The Bornless Ritual & The Holy Guardian Angel

Post#38 » Fri Sep 29, 2017 5:00 am

I did a little digging around and found some interesting similarities between the Headless Ritual and the ancient protective incantations that were designed to summon and direct the ancient Mesopotamian demon Pazuzu. The structure of the incantation shares the switching perspective, going from 1st person perspective to the 2nd person singular and 3rd person:

"I am Pazuzu, the son of Hanbu, king of the evil lilu-demons.
I ascended the mighty mountains that quaked.
The winds that I went amongst were headed towards the west.
One by one I broke their wings."

Then:

"You, mighty one, who ascends the mountains,
Who faces all the winds,
Angry wind, who's rising is terrible,
Fierce one, raging one, who comes on furiously,
Who roars at the world regions, who wrecks the high mountains,
Who parches the marshland, who withers its reeds.

He confronted the wood, dropped its trees,
He passed to the garden, dropped down its fruit,
He descended to the river, poured out ice,
He went up the the dry land, covered it with hoarfrost,
He struck the young man, hunched him over,
He knocked the young woman, hit her womb,
He descended to the river, poured out ice,
He went up to the dry land, covered it with hoarfrost.

Agony of mankind, disease of mankind, suffering of mankind,
Do not enter the house I enter, do not come near the house I come near, do not approach the house I approach!
Be conjured and stay conjured by Anu and Antu, Enlil and Ninlil, Ea and Damkina, heaven and earth!"

Interestingly, Pazuzu was used as an apotropaion against demons and was also used to give authority to the exorcist, as Pazuzu was considered the king of the demons.

I am not suggesting that the headless one IS Pazuzu, only that it seems that the method of action between these two entities is too similar to be coincidental. Is it possible that the headless one could be some sort of dark god/demon that has prescribed authority over evil spirits?

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Astar_Mundi
Magister Templi
Posts: 5121

Re: The Bornless Ritual & The Holy Guardian Angel

Post#39 » Fri Sep 29, 2017 8:32 am

Magister C wrote:
Quite simply stated, yet crowley expresses it riddled with hebrew alphabet puzzles and false syncretism of 10 different gods for what? The only logical answers is he was fucking with everyone or had major blind spots. And for the record i have a lot of respect for crowley. Its not his fault the GD gave him the kabbalah addiction, and its also not his fault that most of the papyri that enlighten these philosophies were not available in languages he read, or at all at the times of his writing. But they are blind spots none the less. He said himself several times "my personal religion is egyptian" ... so why use the satan serpent example with eden etc (of a faith he himself claimed to hate) when Set as the Bata serpent is what is actually relevant to the thelemic teachings(egyptian)? Blindspots.


I do not disagree with anything you have said here, I also do not use the Judaic Christian God names when using Goetia. I'll touch on that a little later here. Crowley was a man of his time, and yeah, he didn't have access to the recent scholarly material we are fortunate to have today, so I think he made the best of what he had at hand.

The Victorian era would have been a difficult time for a free thinker to have been born into, Crowley's life was marred from a young age with the perverted misery of the gospels and its sanctimonious indoctrination, imagine having to deconstruct the oppressive edifice of these mores in those times?

Even when he made headway into making progress with his esoteric interests, he joins an order believing these guys were in contact with the 'secret chiefs', and finds a bunch of ex masons and the same ol shit God he was trying to get away from.

Of course the GD are taught not to see any name of God as culturally specific, but rather a generic name for the creative intelligence behind all things, (if you believe in that kind of thing), still that's the way it was, Agrippa and pseudo masonic rituals, a smattering of eastern mysticism, and all filo faxed into the Kabbalah and other similar practices. Of course the fact that the young Crowley drank to excess, used drugs, gambled and fucked whores didn't help his rep to much either. The stuffy limitations of lesser minds would not hold such a man for long.

I feel the most important contribution the man made was not the prolific amount of writing he produced, or his Kabbalistic rambles, but the fact he created a battery of Gnostic techniques, to empower his ritual workings. He also understood the so called self, was mostly an accretion of social and genetic accidents, that have nothing to do with the essence of the true self.

He was often LHP in the way he lived, and then he would absorb his consciousness into Samadhi as well, I don't think he could ever figure out where he truly stood on this. Even his essay in Magick Without Tears' is not as clear cut as people believe.

Indeed The Bornless Rite is better understood today, and yet I have used it both for HGD work and for Goetic work, often I use the rubric and then simply use an ad-lib evocation to summon a spirit. Despite people going on about the ritual not meaning this or that, or whatever, it has never been a problem for me using it for a variety of reasons. Set is easily called using it for example, in fact as you intimated, its perfect for that purpose really. Then there is a GD ritual that uses part of it to call Thoth. If something works for the purpose I intend it to, then with all due respect to scholars, I don't give a fuck.

Like Crowley, I learned the Kabbala for the reasons of classification, not for any religious purpose (one could just as easily use the eight rated star of Chaos for this purpose), but merely for the practical reasons of ritual construction, most of the more obvious associations are valid-for example Mars Red-Tobacco -Sword, Stimulants, and a number of deities-its handy to have dozens of correspondences in your noggin, its just useful, having said that, I understand that I am older than most people on this board, and when I was a young man, it was pretty much mandatory to learn this stuff.



That's the thing. Nowadays, most youth live LHP lifestyles without ever calling it such. Younger female friends of mine and males too, yet in Crowley's day it was extremely outlandish and whilst I would laugh at such "Black Masses" the like of which are engaged upon every Monday, Tuesday and boring workaday week I know of, orgiastic in their limitless hedonism without ever the thought of a taboo - nay, now it is mere banal occurence :lol:

he was as stifled by his environment and reactionary to his times as anyone else is, yet he was too proud and arrogant (traits I admire btw) to admit that his great personality could ever be influenced by an external force.

He perhaps was not suited to the LHP because of his natural inclinations, however.
It's an interesting case, a new biographer of Crowley, if they ever did appear, would be fascinating if they explored such a concept.
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Astar_Mundi
Magister Templi
Posts: 5121

Re: The Bornless Ritual & The Holy Guardian Angel

Post#40 » Fri Sep 29, 2017 8:35 am

nipha333 wrote:
Magister C wrote:
The Victorian era would have been a difficult time for a free thinker to have been born into, Crowley's life was marred from a young age with the perverted misery of the gospels and its sanctimonious indoctrination, imagine having to deconstruct the oppressive edifice of these mores in those times?

.


I definitely understand that it was not a matter of who gives a shit Ill make it up, and mostly circumstantial. It is impossible to imagine his upbringing for me, as I was raised by a weed growing deadhead who to this day refuses to wear socks and shoes lol. I also had a very involved grandmother who was a bibliophile to the extreme, so where he had drawbacks, I have had benefits. I do have a high level of respect for him despite the blurring of thelema with his kabbalistic rambles as you called them.

Magister C wrote:

He was often LHP in the way he lived, and then he would absorb his consciousness into Samadhi as well, I don't think he could ever figure out where he truly stood on this. Even his essay in Magick Without Tears' is not as clear cut as people believe.


I feel like the confusion here is compounded by the fact that Crowley himself wasnt clear on what left or right consisted of. Then this confusion about which thelema is is further compounded by the fact that the Crowley section in the one reasonable exposition on the matter, Flowers Lords of the Left Hand Path is kind of superficial and one can tell pretty quickly that as knowledgable as Flowers may be he has never actually worked crowleys system, but only read it.



Flowers is a Sethian, most of Lords of the Left Hand Path, which is an excellent book, is biased towards that particular branch of LHP thought.

Ergo, I would not expect Flowers to be a Thelemite of any degree- why would he? He already has his own path.
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