Memes
The Blogalyser reveals…
Your blog/web page text has an overall readability index of 14.
This suggests that your writing style is conventional
(to communicate well you should aim for a figure between 10 and 20).
Your blog has 23 sentences per entry, which suggests your general message is distinguished by verbosity
(writing for the web should be concise).
CHARACTER MATRIX
| male |   |
female |
| self |    |
world |
| past |    |
future |
Your text shows characteristics which are 55% male and 45% female
(for more information see the Gender Genie).
Looking at pronoun indicators, you write mainly about yourself, then the world in general and finally your social circle. Also, your writing focuses primarily on the present, next the future and lastly the past.
Find out what your blogging style is like!
So, hermeticalchemy, your LiveJournal reveals…
You are… 3% unique (blame, for example, your interest in consciousness changes) and 11% herdlike (partly because you, like everyone else, enjoy politics). When it comes to friends you are normal. In terms of the way you relate to people, you are keen to please. Your writing style (based on a recent public entry) is intellectual.
Your overall weirdness is: 39
(The average level of weirdness is: 28.
You are weirder than 80% of other LJers.)
Thankful Thursday & Conscious Commitment
Thankful Thursday
I am thankful for:
- my calling and my spiritual guidance.
- the opportunities I’ve had for magical and personal development.
- my parents.
- the books and teachers who have come to my aid when I needed them.
- my fiance Kasey.
- my friends.
- my Coven, especially (but not exclusively) my Elder Frater Barrabbas Tieresius, my Brother Griff, and my Sister Grace.
- my opportunity to move and start a life in Waynesville, NC.
Conscious Commitment
I consciously commit to:
- manifesting the love, grace, and justice of God in my life.
- conducting the traits above into the world around me.
- becoming more physically healthy and aware of my body.
- going to college to study theology.
- becoming a dutiful minister.
- becoming an effective healer.
- recieving in-depth training in numerous types of healing.
A Calling
After a long series of bizarre developments (initiation into an Alexandrian Coven, etc.), I’m sure that it will not shock many of my close friends to hear of a recent development.
It is often said that those drawn to the clergy are “called” to do so in no uncertain way. It isn’t something, they say, that you can really ignore. You can doubt it, you can force yourself to misinterpret it, but there is no denying it. I find the same to be true for magicians. Perhaps sometimes, just sometimes, the two can overlap.
I’ve had a feeling for a few years that this is what I was being drawn to do, to be a healer of souls (to put a dramatic name to it). I tried to interpret it in numerous ways. I tried to put a scientific face on it, to make it “reasonable”. I decided that I needed to study psychology, to become a therapist. I tried that route, and it was interesting study but not what I truly needed it to be.
So what now? Let’s face it: there are as many approaches to the Divine as there are people, and so it should be. One problem is that there are not a lot of ministers who are willing to tell them so, and even fewer who have much practical experience with the Divine to draw on for inspiration.
So there it is. I’m going to work my way toward a Divinity school. It will not be easy. Community colleges are my only real option for starting out and they don’t offer courses in theology, typically. Also, the only non-denominational Divinity schools here in the US are in really high-level universities. There are only five such Divinity schools, and they’re pretty much all Ivy League (or at least close to it). In other words, as things stand now I’m not getting in. So I’ll have to get my Associates in general education or something (philosophy or psychology might be good starts, too). The catch is that I’ll have to put in a ton of effort. I’ll need to get absolutely awesome grades in order to get into one of those Divinity schools, and to get enough financial aid to afford the process.
And then what? A ministry. Maybe in a UU church, maybe in my own, I don’t know. That has yet to be determined, at least by me.
And the strangest part? My calling came through a soap opera character. Go ahead and laugh. God has a sense of humor.
Yup. I’m gonna be a minister when I grow up! Let the skeptical replies begin…
It’s Only Semantics
Taylor Ellwood brought up a good point in my most recent entry on meditation. [A reference to my old LJ from which this was taken.] Basically, I tend to make the (probably poor) assumption that when I use technically specialized words like “meditation”, it comes with the automatic suffix of “as I define it”. That, of course, should be mentioned now and again just to remind people that I can’t define it anybody else’s way. As has been pointed out time and again, we can’t always get across the subtlety of meaning online that we could in face-to-face conversation, so it helps to periodically remind ourselves of the fact that text-only communication is not infallible, and we do not infallibly interpret it.
My definition of meditation basically is “No-mind”; I use more specialized names for other techniques. That isn’t to reduce the importance of those other techniques, but to place them within context in my own mind and practice.
From now on, I’ll try to be a bit more clear on my working definitions. In magic and mysticism, we have a (fairly) commonly shared vocabulary. We are not, however, a group of physicists so all of our technical vocabulary will be defined differently by each person. Even in the hard sciences there is some room for interpretation for terminology not defined strictly in mathematical terms. I think that if we paid more attention to this phenomenon, there would be many fewer arguments among those of us in the occult and spiritual communities.
The True Secret of Meditation
We humans like to make things a lot more difficult than they really are. We do this by shifting awareness from one aspect of a situation to another, generally away from the obvious and toward as many irrelevant details as we can possibly find.
In matters of mystical and magical efforts, we tend to make this mistake moreso than in any other arena of human action. Magic and mysticism are essentially simple things (though “simple” is not the same as “easy”) and, when treated as such, we can break down much of the difficulty we face.
The essence of meditation is No-mind (or “Vacancy of Mind”). This causes problems for more people than any other form or aspect of meditation. Most instruction on the subject of meditation is vague on the point of how, exactly, we are supposed to clear our minds and keep them clear. The most common method given is to focus our attention on one thought, and one thought alone, for long enough to completely dissolve our minds into that one specific thought. Then, after the point of conscious absorption, we simply remove even that one all-encompassing thought leaving us a complete internal blank.
While this method does work, and I consider it to be the best and most direct method for initially learning Vacancy of Mind, it will only serve as an inroad to the vast and empty realm of No-mind meditation. So how to continue? I have found, through years of practice and the recent working of Franz Bardon’s system of magico-mystical attainment, that the simplest way is often the best. In this case, the simplest method which I have discovered returns us to awareness. Our awareness is the first part of ourselves over which we must gain absolute control, for attention/awareness is the key to all of the arts and sciences of consciousness.
Once you have mastered the ability to free your mind of thoughts by absorbing awareness into a single thought and then removing it, you must move on to keeping your mind empty. This is not a matter of “thinking of nothing” or “concentrating on not thinking”. Those approaches, while common, are counter-productive and in fact throw up further obstacles. Instead, whenever a thought impinges upon your inner silence, quickly and aggressively remove your attention from the offending thought. That’s it. It’s that simple. Whenever a thought pops into your head, as they inevitably will, just stop paying attention.
It takes time to master this method, as it takes time to master anything of importance, but it is ultumately worth it. Meditation is the single most important discipline (which to many magicians and mystics is a dirty word) to personal, magical, and spiritual development. Not only does it strongly develop self-discipline better than almost anything else, but it also serves as the most portable method of trance induction, among more ethereal benefits which go largely unrecognized by many post-modern magical practitioners.
Thankful Thursday & Conscious Commitment
Thankful Thursday
I am thankful for:
- the opportunities I’ve had for magical and personal development.
- my parents.
- the books and teachers who have come to my aid when I needed them.
- my fiance Kasey.
- my friends.
- my Coven, especially (but not exclusively) my Elder Frater Barrabbas Tieresius, my Brother Griff, and my Sister Grace.
- my opportunity to move and start a life in Waynesville, NC.
Conscious Commitment
I consciously commit to:
- manifesting the love, grace, and justice of God in my life.
- conducting the traits above into the world around me.
- becoming more physically healthy and aware of my body.
- removing swear words from my daily vocabulary.
- becoming an effective healer.
- recieving in-depth training in numerous types of healing.
- finding a way to make a living doing something I truly love and which provides a real service.
On the Marginalizing of Compassion
I’m personally sick of the collective amnesia of the people of this nation. While I am not superior in this regard, the only way to fix it in my own mind is to start making changes in my own behavior. To that end, I wrote a (possibly slightly vitreous) letter and e-mailed it to my three congressional representatives (in both the House and Senate). That letter follows.
Dear [Senator Isakson, Senator Chambliss, & Representative Linder],
I’ve written to you before, and nearly every e-mail I’ve sent to you has been returned by an automatic response telling me respectfully but firmly that you disagree with whatever it is that I happened to be talking about at the time. I understand that you’ll probably have a similar response to this one, but I insist on speaking nonetheless.
In this country, we have a frighteningly short memory about cataclysmic events on all planes of experience. It’s as if we’ve been afflicted with a massive case of ADHD, but only where it concerns things of political, intellectual, social, and spiritual import. While I am as prone to it as anybody else, I have made the conscious decision to at least attempt to hold in mind certain events which hurt and kill my fellow humans, and which continue to cause suffering.
I will not get into the politics and economics of the present war in Iraq, as that’s an area in which I know that you and I already disagree and probably forever will. Suffice it to say that the commandment is “Thou shalt not kill” and not “Thou shalt not kill certain people under certain circumstances, but anybody else is fair game.”
My main point here is concerning Hurricane Katrina and the continuing aftermath. I’m sure that whichever one of your aids reads this will immediately think, “Wait, did I get this on the right date? Is he talking about THAT hurricane even now?” Yes. On July 19, 2007 I am bringing up Hurricane Katrina and the devastation of Louisiana and Mississippi. The fact is that before we concern ourselves with the many issues abroad (whether they be terrorism or poverty), perhaps we should instead look within. While I would love it is you took that literally, and looked within yourself to your own spirit, what’s really at issue here is within the borders of these United States of America. We are, as a nation, spending so much money in killing all of those dreadful brown-skinned people around the world that we have narry a penny remaining to maintain the health and safety of those right nearby (even if they are brown-skinned).
Why is so much money being spent abroad, and why does congress keep signing the checks, when there is at least one entire city to be reconstructed? The only work which has been done so far in New Orleans was a rebuilding of the business sector. While that is effective in bolstering city and state income from tourism, none of that income has gone to rebuilding the homes of long-time New Orleans residents, many of whom have had to relocate indefinitely to far-flung regions of the country.
I encourage you to rethink all of the federal budgets, and I pray that you search the depths of your very being to find that compassion which is so necessary and yet so lost to the world of public duty. America has forgotten that you, as our representatives on the federal level, are our employees and not our bosses. This is not a threat, but merely a reminder from one citizen to another: keep your duties to us in perspective.
In Divine love,
Nicholas G. [last name removed]
Organic Food Alert
Keep organic food organic! Make a comment direct to the regulation proposal, not simply an online petition. With thanks to .
Thankful Thursday & Conscious Commitment
Thankful Thursday
I am thankful for:
- the opportunities I’ve had for magical and personal development.
- my parents.
- my fiance Kasey.
- my friends.
- my Coven, especially (but not exclusively) my Elder Frater Barrabbas Tieresius, my Brother Griff, and my Sister Grace.
- my opportunity to move and start a life in Waynesville, NC.
Conscious Commitment
I consciously commit to:
- manifesting the love, grace, and justice of God in my life.
- conducting the traits above into the world around me.
- removing swear words from my daily vocabulary.
- becoming an effective healer.
- recieving in-depth training in numerous types of healing.
- finding a way to make a living doing something I truly love and which provides a real service.
Hermetic Curriculum Total
I’ll place links here to each phase of the Hermetic curriculum as I create them. This is primarily for my convenience, and I will also be placing a link to this entry in the links list of my LJ.
Hermetic Curriculum phase 1
Hermetic Curriculum phase 2
Hermetic Curriculum phase 3
