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Greek Qabalah and my current work
May. 24th, 2011 03:28 amI have been getting back to the basics of magical practice, refreshing my memory and my skills, and reconsidering various things. I started out very basic, going back to doing the LBRP every day when I woke up and before I went to bed, but it bothered me. I switched to the Gnostic Pentagram Rite from Peter Carroll, but it's too abstract. While I know that the Qabalistic stuff is pretty syncretic, I really don't like using all the Hebrew godnames, and frankly, I've never been a fan of the language, either.
The main thing, of course, is that I don't believe in YHVH, and if I did, I'd hate him. I think the religions based on that entity are fairly toxic in general, and while all 3 do have useful, mystical traditions associated with them, it's trivial to show evidence that those mystical traditions are pagan in nature, generally going back to philosophical explorations that are mostly Greek. They're not all Greek, of course, there's Egyptian, Roman, a whole bunch of stuff from the various different peoples that have lived between the Tigris and Euphrates, but they do seem to all have a non-monotheistic origin, and the majority of classical (as in pre-medieval) materials that have survived and influenced modern magical practice are Greek, and therefore the Greek will be my focus.
I first read Hermetic Magic by Stephen Flowers years ago, before first joining the Temple of Set. I'm re-reading it along with a few other books. I had forgotten about it, but he includes an alternate Tree of Life in there, with 24 paths rather than 22, so that they correspond to the Greek alphabet. I don't know if he created it, or just found it. It's kinda thrown in the book without much comment, but it's stuck in my head.
I also found it here:
http://www.crcsite.org/GreekKabala1.
I haven't read the whole series yet, and it gets into a lot of the Christian stuff I'd like to avoid, but I still will finish reading it at some point.
I like that image, but I think for my own uses I'd restore 3-6 and 2-6, removing 8-10 and 7-10 to compensate. That gives me some nice nested hexagrams (unicursal and traditional) and pentagrams (averse and upright) in the top section there. I haven't worked out all the meanings of doing so yet, but I'm working on it.
So anyway, in addition to renewing my active work, I'm also apparently engaged in some Greek reconstructive work. So far, LBRP wise, I have replaced the Qabalistic Cross in my own practice with Sam Webster's Quantum Cross, which can be found here:
http://www.osogd.org/library/biscuits/
I like his whole rite, but at this point I don't feel like replacing all the Yahwist baggage with Thelemic baggage, even if I do consider myself at least mostly sympathetic with Thelemic goals. I'm just trying to get back to the pagan roots right now, so I'm just stealing the first part. Right now, for my daily praxis I'm doing that in combination with the pentagrams from Carroll's GPR, vibrating IEAOU while drawing them, and that's ok for now, but my goal is a full reconstruction of the LBRP, eventually.
The rest of this is a list of resources I've found while researching all this. By necessity of brokeness, all my research has been online so far, although I'm also re-reading Flowers' Hermetic Magic, I'm getting around to reading Garth Fowden's The Egyptian Hermes, and I plan on purchasing Keiren Barry's The Greek Qabalah when the books I have on eBay sell. The rest of this is just a big linkdump, mainly for my own reference, but open for comments for anyone else interested.
Beginning of Greek Qabalah series from the Rosicrucian Archive:
http://www.crcsite.org/GreekKabala1.
The Ancient Greek Esoteric Doctrine of The Elements:
http://web.eecs.utk.edu/~mclennan/BA/
Lots of Wikilinks:
Sepher Yetzirah:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Marcosian Gnostics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Isopsephy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isopsephy
Papyrae Graecae Magicae:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Corpus Hermeticum:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Plotinus:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plotinus
Neoplatonism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
And then some others I found:
Free Greek lessons online:
http://www.kypros.org/LearnGreek/
A work in progress, apparently, but looks like it will become useful soon:
http://isopsephy.com/
Always fun, has tons of material, including the PGM, The Corpus Hermeticum, The Enneads, and even versions of that Sam Webster stuff I posted:
http://hermetic.com/
That should be plenty for now.
The main thing, of course, is that I don't believe in YHVH, and if I did, I'd hate him. I think the religions based on that entity are fairly toxic in general, and while all 3 do have useful, mystical traditions associated with them, it's trivial to show evidence that those mystical traditions are pagan in nature, generally going back to philosophical explorations that are mostly Greek. They're not all Greek, of course, there's Egyptian, Roman, a whole bunch of stuff from the various different peoples that have lived between the Tigris and Euphrates, but they do seem to all have a non-monotheistic origin, and the majority of classical (as in pre-medieval) materials that have survived and influenced modern magical practice are Greek, and therefore the Greek will be my focus.
I first read Hermetic Magic by Stephen Flowers years ago, before first joining the Temple of Set. I'm re-reading it along with a few other books. I had forgotten about it, but he includes an alternate Tree of Life in there, with 24 paths rather than 22, so that they correspond to the Greek alphabet. I don't know if he created it, or just found it. It's kinda thrown in the book without much comment, but it's stuck in my head.
I also found it here:
http://www.crcsite.org/GreekKabala1.
I haven't read the whole series yet, and it gets into a lot of the Christian stuff I'd like to avoid, but I still will finish reading it at some point.
I like that image, but I think for my own uses I'd restore 3-6 and 2-6, removing 8-10 and 7-10 to compensate. That gives me some nice nested hexagrams (unicursal and traditional) and pentagrams (averse and upright) in the top section there. I haven't worked out all the meanings of doing so yet, but I'm working on it.
So anyway, in addition to renewing my active work, I'm also apparently engaged in some Greek reconstructive work. So far, LBRP wise, I have replaced the Qabalistic Cross in my own practice with Sam Webster's Quantum Cross, which can be found here:
http://www.osogd.org/library/biscuits/
I like his whole rite, but at this point I don't feel like replacing all the Yahwist baggage with Thelemic baggage, even if I do consider myself at least mostly sympathetic with Thelemic goals. I'm just trying to get back to the pagan roots right now, so I'm just stealing the first part. Right now, for my daily praxis I'm doing that in combination with the pentagrams from Carroll's GPR, vibrating IEAOU while drawing them, and that's ok for now, but my goal is a full reconstruction of the LBRP, eventually.
The rest of this is a list of resources I've found while researching all this. By necessity of brokeness, all my research has been online so far, although I'm also re-reading Flowers' Hermetic Magic, I'm getting around to reading Garth Fowden's The Egyptian Hermes, and I plan on purchasing Keiren Barry's The Greek Qabalah when the books I have on eBay sell. The rest of this is just a big linkdump, mainly for my own reference, but open for comments for anyone else interested.
Beginning of Greek Qabalah series from the Rosicrucian Archive:
http://www.crcsite.org/GreekKabala1.
The Ancient Greek Esoteric Doctrine of The Elements:
http://web.eecs.utk.edu/~mclennan/BA/
Lots of Wikilinks:
Sepher Yetzirah:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Marcosian Gnostics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Isopsephy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isopsephy
Papyrae Graecae Magicae:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Corpus Hermeticum:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Plotinus:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plotinus
Neoplatonism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
And then some others I found:
Free Greek lessons online:
http://www.kypros.org/LearnGreek/
A work in progress, apparently, but looks like it will become useful soon:
http://isopsephy.com/
Always fun, has tons of material, including the PGM, The Corpus Hermeticum, The Enneads, and even versions of that Sam Webster stuff I posted:
http://hermetic.com/
That should be plenty for now.
