Greek Qabalah and my current work

[masque12]

I 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.htm
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/milkStars.html
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.htm
The Ancient Greek Esoteric Doctrine of The Elements:
http://web.eecs.utk.edu/~mclennan/BA/AGEDE/index.html
Lots of Wikilinks:
Sepher Yetzirah:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sefer_Yetzirah#Gnostic_elements
Marcosian Gnostics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcosians
Isopsephy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isopsephy
Papyrae Graecae Magicae:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Magical_Papyri
Corpus Hermeticum:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_Hermeticum
Plotinus:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plotinus
Neoplatonism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoplatonism

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.

Comments

Hellenic pentagram ritual

[ariadnerainbird]

hi
I have been thinking about how to adapt the LBRP in a Greek pagan way, and whilst searching for ideas came across your page, so interested that you are doing the same. I have found a couple of Hellenic adaptations - one by Israel Regardie in his book The Middle Pillar, and the other The Olympic Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram by John Opsopaus, published on various websites. However, neither of them quite work for me, and after much thought, I decided that the Hellenic gods and Hellenic religion, or at least the Orphic tradition which I follow, just doesn't map on to the qabalistic formula of the pentagram ritual, and a new ritual needs to be.created which is more In line with Hellenic/Orphic ideas. As I was doing my daily devotional practice last night, and was lighting the candles for the 12 Olympians, in a curcke, whilst stating the names, natural laws and zodiacal signs they preside over, it occurred to me to use just that. So I came up with a basic Orphic circke/banishing ritual as follows:
Begin with a variation of qabalistic cross, but intoning Ouranus, Gaia, as you bring the light down from heaven to earth. Hera, Zeus, as you cross the light from right to left. Dionysos, as you clasp hands in centre.
Face East, draw pentagram, visualise a pillar of fire, and intone HESTIA, KINISIS, ZYGOS,
Turn slightly anticlockwise to EEN, and draw pentagram, visualise pillar of fire and intone ARES ZOE SCORPIOS
Then to NNE, ARTEMIS ENERGIA TOXOTIS
And so on round the circle ending with DEMETER ENERGIA THEON STIKTHYS in the EES.
Then perform the Greek cross again, finally ending with:
O Blessed Gods about me, bright thou art,
Thy power and glory burns within my heart
This place be cleansed and free from ill intent
O purifying fire from heaven sent
All about is clean and all is pure
Shine on thy mystic, with countenance demure
For I am a child of earth and starry sky
And of the race of Gods am I

I have tried this and it works really well.

Re: Hellenic pentagram ritual

[masque12]

I've since given up on occultism and become an atheist, but if it works for you, have fun with it.

Re: Hellenic pentagram ritual

[ariadnerainbird]

Ok, never mind. I found some of the links you posted helpful anyway, even if I decided not to use anything from them in my own version. And you never know, you might come back to some kind of spiritual path eventually - if you have had an interest in the spiritual, it is probably still lurking there somewhere. But the Occult world is full of shit at times and can be off-putting ;-) Good luck whatever you do

Re: Hellenic pentagram ritual

[masque12]

No worries, I'm glad you found some of it useful. While I no longer have any belief in the supernatural, I am a secular Buddhist in addition to being an atheist. I don't believe in karma or reincarnation, but I do find the ethical philosophy and meditative practices of Buddhism highly useful, and I combine them with Stoicism, Epicureanism, Dudeism, and various others of what Jennifer Michael Hecht called "graceful life philosophies" in her book _Doubt: A History_. So in that non-supernatural sense, I am still "spiritual", for some values of that word.