HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: ba@mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu (B.A. Davis-Howe)
Subject: Re: authors not Crowley
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 00:28:43 GMT

oispeggy@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu (Peggy Brown) writes:

>Question, how are you going to approach magick, since you dislike 
>meditation?  The only other approach I've heard of is large 
>amounts of hallucinogens.  Just curious.

Well, I don't do much meditation in my magic.  (I do some Centering Prayer now,
but I spent lots of years doing magic without meditation.)  I work with energy
flows.  Vital force in human bodies, energy fields in the world around us.  I
don't have to meditate or to stop the internal dialogue.  I just have to feel
the energy and nudge it along.  This takes effort, but it is not meditative.  
(This is a very good thing, since slowing down is very hard for me.)  For 
fictional account which come close to what I experience, read the "Earthsea"
trilogy by LeGuin or "The Last Herald Mage" trilogy by Lackey.  Remember that
they are only fiction--I don't claim that they represent what I do, just that
the descriptions often parallel how I experience what I do.


              Merry meet, merry part, merry meet again,
                               Br'anArthur

Queer, Peculiar, and Wyrd! :-)

******************************************************************************
Newage is hypoallergenic spirituality--
it's for people who are allergic to the word religion.
                                   --Jon Jay Obermark
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 00:12:00 -0400 
From: "Andrew C. Plotkin" <ap1i+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: The pentagram
	<1992Sep10.220515.18804@hpcvaac.cv.hp.com>

Tagi@cup.portal.com (Tagi Mordred Nagashiva) writes:
: 
: Dart:
: 
: I get the feeling that Inverted, Point Down, Upright, and Point Up, are
: ALL fairly easy terms to understand, and I HOPE that everyone reading 
: this group
: knows what all of them mean.  If not, inverted means point down, and upright
: means point up.
: 
: 
: Response:
: 
: This is what I dispute as both fallacious and ignorant.  What if I take
: the 'correct' position to be point-down?  Then 'inverted' means point-up,
: and so on.  It is an implied fundamentalism where none exists.

If the pentagram is a symbol, then it *necessarily* has connotations to
it. To many people, including myself, the "point-up-upright,
point-down-inverted" terminology is "standard" -- part of the
definition, coming from whatever mythical or historical roots the
pentagram came from in the first place. To deny those meanings is to
deny part of the meaning, and therefore the power, of the symbol.

This is, of course, personal. If you come from a tradition in which
point-up pentagrams are "inverted", then that is how you will relate to
it. If you come from a tradition that makes no distinction, then you
won't care. 

In my case, the meaning of the pentagram is partially derived from the
Christian/mystical tradition (which labels the pentagrams in the
familiar manner); it is also symbolic of a person (a head and four
limbs), which has a definite distinction between upright and inverted.

I do not impute a "fundamental" distinction; rather, I deny that there
*are* fundamental meanings of symbols. You have to take your own
knowledge and biases into account, or you're left staring at a bunch of
random lines.

(My, that came out a lot more pedantic than I thought it would... :-)

--Z

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
From: af2e+@andrew.cmu.edu (Alex Feely)
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Subject: Re:Astral Plane
Date: 14 Sep 92 20:55:35 GMT
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA

Hello,

    I would also be interested in this topic. Please post all answers on
alt.magick. thank you


                                                                        
                     Alex Feely
From: amanda@INTERCON.COM (Amanda Walker)
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Subject: Re: (Was Shielding) Now: Letting shields down.
Date: 9 Sep 92 06:40:05 GMT

oispeggy@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu (Peggy Brown) writes:
> I've read about some new ways of putting up shields.  How about 
> ways to let shields down.
> 
> I find it much harder to be vulnerable.

Indeed.  I will now risk sounding stoned :):

The strongest shield is none at all.  No one can break the wall that is not 
there.  The strongest weapon someone can wield against you is fear, because 
it turns you against yourself.  The strongest shield you can mount is perfect 
love.  Love overcomes fear, and transforms enemies into friends.

This isn't just pollyannist claptrap.  It works.

Amanda Walker
-- 
"Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a ring upon your arm;
 For love is strong as death...its flashes are flashes of fire,
 A flame of the Eternal."		--Song of Songs 8:6-7
From: SL500000@brownvm.brown.edu (Robert Mathiesen)
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Subject: Re: Easter's date
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 11:04:33 EDT
Organization: Brown University - Providence, Rhode Island  USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: brownvm.brown.edu
News-Software: BNN via BNN_POST v1.0 beta

Yes, the 19-year cycle to which I referred is the Metonic cycle, or derives
from it.  The calendar in I Enoch indeed bears a relation to the Christian
Easter calculations mentioned in my last posting.  (Do you know about the
late Otto Neugebauer's two books on these calculations and his appendix to
a recent translation of I Enoch?  You might enjoy them.  I'll post the re-
ferences if they're of interest.)  In these Easter calculations there are
two cycles.  One consists of 19 years, and relates to the moon.  The other
consists of 28 years and is thought to relate to the sun: in fact, what it
relates to is not the astronomical movements of the sun, but the position
of Sunday within the solar year of 365 or 366 days.  The whole complex pat-
tern is recursive, and its period is the least common multiple of 19 x 28,
which in this case is the same as their product, namely 532 years.  The
current Jewish calendar, which can be traced back at least to the first
centuries of the Christian era in documents, has a more complex theory of
lunar and solar movement, and does not repeat every 532 years.
--Robert

Robert Mathiesen, Brown University, SL500000@BROWNVM
Newsgroups: alt.magick
From: grimoire@byron.u.washington.edu (John Greer)
Subject: Re: power points in general and geomancy
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 21:51:39 GMT

In article <65479@cup.portal.com> Tagi@cup.portal.com (Tagi Mordred Nagashiva) writes:

>magicians.  Anybody know where the Golden Dawn's system of 'geomancy'
>came from?

It's been a part of magical traditions in the West since the Middle Ages.
Like alchemy (and so much else), it reached Europe by way of the Arabs;
there seems to be some argument about who actually came up with it, but
a good case can be made for African origins.

In the revival of magical arts that accompanied the Renaissance, geomancy
had the same sort of role that Tarot had during the 19th Century revival
(or, for that matter, at present).  Many of the major occultists of the 
time were heavily involved in it - Cornelius Agrippa and Robert Fludd
are probably the best-known examples.  For that matter, the Rudd manu-
scripts (apparently relics of a magical group from the early 1700's) 
include a table of correspondences between the geomantic symbols and the 
Enochian alphabet from John Dee's work.

To answer your question more exactly, though, the stuff in the Golden 
Dawn knowledge lectures on geomancy was lifted, basically intact, from
a couple of books by John Heydon, an English occult author of the mid-
1600's.  I seem to remember that _The Holy Guide_ was the main source.
What Mathers et al. took, though, was basically the kindergarten-level
material, although they did bring in Gerard of Cremona's astrological
structure; there's a fair amount of more advanced material which, to my
knowledge, nobody modern has touched.  (With the exception of Priscilla
Schwei's _Astrological Geomancy_, which is more astrology than geomancy
anyway, the modern books on the subject are basically rewrites of the 
G.D. documents - not surprising, for the same thing applies equally well
to present works on a remarkable number of subjects.)

-- JMG


Newsgroups: alt.magick
From: grimoire@byron.u.washington.edu (John Greer)
Subject: Re: 666 (was The pentagram)
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 21:21:16 GMT

Three brief notes on the Number of the Beast:

a) I'm surprised no one's mentioned the meaning of 666 in terms of the 
   numerology of the planetary magic squares.  666 is a solar number -
   if I'm remembering correctly, it's the sum of all the numbers in the
   magic square of the Sun - and is the number of the name of Sorath,
   the spirit of the Sun.  (Those not familiar with this system can
   look up the details in Book 4 of Regardie's _Golden Dawn_.)

b) 666, like every number of 3 identical digits, is a multiple of 37 -
   a number which I'm told has a whole host of meanings in the Greek
   gematria-equivalent that plays a role in Christian symbolism.        
   (Those interested in matters Rosicrucian may recall the "37 Reasons"
   alluded to, but never given, in the text of the original Rosicrucian
   manifestoes.)  John Michell's book _City of Revelation_, which is
   mostly about gematria, covers this - in fact, it gives a chapter to
   666.  

c) The old Rosicrucian manuscript _Physica Metaphysica & Hyperphysica
   D.O.M.A._ - Manly P. Hall reprinted it some years back under the
   title _Codex Rosae Crucis_, and I think it's in print at present -
   does a lot of talking about 666; my interpretation is little more 
   than a guess (the ms. is extraordinarily cryptic, mostly a collection
   of weird diagrams with densely written captions and references to
   Bible verses, some of which do not exist) but it seems to read the
   bit in Revelation calling 666 "the number of a man" as "the number of
   _man_," or of humanity:  the numerical symbol of our essential
   humanness, which is also the factor in us that makes us capable of
   inhumanness (the "Beast," in this symbolism).  There's one passage
   in the ms. which posits 6 as a number just short of completion, in
   need of unity to become 7 and perfect; there's another that points
   out that if you flip 666 over, you get 999, and add 1:  voila, 1000,
   the Millennium.

If there's a moral to this story it's that a symbol as abstract as this   
one can be read in more ways than you probably want to think about.  Me,
I've always liked the interpretation best that starts by counting the 
number of letters in Ronald Wilson Reagan's name...;-)

--JMG

Newsgroups: alt.magick
From: mcgrath@cs.uiuc.edu (Robert McGrath)
Subject: Re: A question about reasons for Magickal effectiveness
Reply-To: mcgrath@cs.uiuc.edu
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept of Computer Science
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 19:36:03 GMT

In article <1992Sep12.210553.6910@uvm.edu>, chambers@hal.emba.uvm.edu (Christopher A Chambers) writes:
|> 
|>   I have recently been reading the book _Liber_Kaos_, by Peter J. 
|> Carrol. I found the chapter on Chaos Magick Mathematics to be 
|> very interesting and thought provoking. Basicly, he states that 
|> 
|>   M = G * L * (1 - A) * (1 - R)
|> 
|>   Magick = Gnosis * Magical Link * (1 - Conscious Awareness) * 
|>            (1 - Subconscious Resistance)
|> 
|>   Pm = P + (1-P)M^(1/P)
|> 
|>     Pm = Probability of event occuring considering magical effects
|>     P = Standard probability of event occuring

Forgive my ignorance here.  Does Carrol or anyone else explain how to
measure these quantities?

-- 
  Robert E. McGrath
  Urbana Illinois
  mcgrath@cs.uiuc.edu
From: jdh@math.psu.edu (Jeremy D. Hall)
Subject: Re: Up and Down and Pentagrams
Organization: Penn State Department of Mathematics
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 03:05:06 GMT

In article <DGD.92Sep10182504@csd.bu.edu> dgd@csd.bu.edu (David Durand) writes:
>In article <56062@olivea.atc.olivetti.com> gnome@flash.ATC.Olivetti.Com (Gary) writes:
>
>   Up and down.  Inverted.  Bleh!
>
>   It's just rotated 72 degrees.
>
>   Now we could argue about which way it's rotated!  :-)
>   (And which is good or bad...)
>
>   Gary
>
>   (
>    :->=
>   (
>
>Actually n*72 degrees for any integer n. There are an infinite number
>of exoterically indistinguishable point-up and point-down pentagrams.
>Not only that, but the set of point up ones, the set of point down
>ones, and the set of all taken together are isomorphic!
>   So in fact there is no real difference at all -- as long as you
>think in integers and maps.
>
>    --- David


Newsgroups: alt.magick
From: jv@irus.rri.uwo.ca (Jeffrey Verhagen)
Subject: Re: The pentagram
Organization: none
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 20:57:25 GMT

In article <1992Sep8.013839.20454@samba.oit.unc.edu> shava@hermes.oit.unc.edu (Shava Nerad Averett) writes:
...

>Backwards, again, I'm afraid.  666 is listed as 'the number of the beast' in
>John's Revelation.  It is associated in that work as a number having to do

...

Another interpretation of "666" that I read a while back:
The number six is associated with man in early systems of Hebrew symbolism;
whereas the number three is the number of god. The idea is that 666 represents
a man setting himself up as god.

Just another possibility,
Jeff...
Newsgroups: alt.magick
From: friday@netcom.com (Carol Anne Ogdin)
Subject: Re: NLP 1st exercise (Question)
Date: Wed, 09 Sep 92 01:00:43 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 

In <65483@cup.portal.com> Tagi@cup.portal.com (Tagi Mordred Nagashiva) writes:

>9209.08 e.v. [The Birthday of my Abyss!]

>Carol Anne Ogden writes:

>... [lots of good ideas omitted]  

>4.  When you take the method out into the real world...

>Response:

>Which is the 'real world'?  I ask this seriously.  I want to
>understand in which world you base yourself.  Thanks.

First of all, the "real world" is taken out of context.  Steps numbered
1-3 were recommended for performance in private; step 4 in the direc-
tions was about trying out the acquired skill with other people; it is
a colloquialism.

  [Incidenally, thanks for the compliment "good ideas".]

In the general sense, I equate "world" as a metaphor for states of consicous-
ness, or states of reality (and I'll beg the question of whether they're
discrete states; let's assume, simplistically, they are).  I subscribe to
the recent finding, due to a singularity, that "there is an infinitely large
number of realities, or there are none."  As I have an existance proof for
ONE reality, ipso facto, I assume there are an infinite number.

The "real world" is that one habitually occupies in what would be loosely
called the "work-a-day world," occupied by the objects and beings of shared
reality (whatever the hell THAT is!).  For instance, that trance you're in
right now, reading these words, called English.  (Only some of the "worlds",
or "states" are well-enough explored to warrant naming; there vastly many
more that are unnamed.  Furthermore, the names you and I attach might not,
after all, connote the same "world" or "state" at all!  This stuff gets
confusin')

--Friday
-- 
---   ---   ---   ---   ---   ---   ---   ---   ---   ---   ---   ---
    - Friday -                      "Practice random acts of kindness 
      friday@well.sf.ca.us                      and senseless beauty."
      (aka Carol Anne Ogdin@Santa Clara, CA)
From: mesm@netcom.com (Mary E. S. Morris)
Subject: Re: MAGIK
Date: Tue, 08 Sep 92 05:48:59 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 

harish.reddy@factory.com (Harish Reddy) writes:
: Does anyone have a 'spell or a mantr that I msy lesrn to furthrt my
: brlef?
  ^^^^^

What is this?
--
Mary E. S. Morris    |  The future exists first in imagination, then
mesm@netcom.COM      |  in will, then in reality. -- Galivan Burwell
=====================================================================
Netcom - Online Communication Services San Jose, CA
From: Tagi@cup.portal.com (Tagi Mordred Nagashiva)
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Subject: Re: NLP 1st exercise (Question)
Date: Tue,  8 Sep 92 14:31:39 PDT
Organization: The Portal System (TM)

9209.08 e.v. [The Birthday of my Abyss!]

Carol Anne Ogden writes:

... [lots of good ideas omitted]  

4.  When you take the method out into the real world...


Response:

Which is the 'real world'?  I ask this seriously.  I want to
understand in which world you base yourself.  Thanks.


Thyagi
------------------------------------------------------
How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
From: Tagi@cup.portal.com (Tagi Mordred Nagashiva)
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Subject: Re: adresses of OTO
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 92 10:56:19 PDT
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Distribution: na

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
The word of Sin is Restriction.


Toronto OTO address:

Amon-Ra Oasis
P.O. Box 348, Stn. B
Toronto, Ontario, M5T 2W2


Tell them 'Frater Nigris' sent you.


Invoke me under my stars.   Love is the law, love under will.

I am I!

Frater (I) Nigris (666)
Newsgroups: alt.magick
From: grimoire@byron.u.washington.edu (John Greer)
Subject: Re: shields and so forth
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 18:06:50 GMT

All through this discussion of shields and shielding techniques, I've
been watching the posts roll by with some amount of puzzlement.  My own
magical practice (basically Golden Dawn-cum-Dion Fortune, with an in-
creasing amount of 17th c. Rosicrucianism thrown in for spice) doesn't
include anything that I would describe as "shields," in the sense that
seems to be standard here in netland (i.e., some kind of protective
barrier used to exclude hostile/unwanted energies).  This doesn't mean
that there aren't methods of protection -- the Pentagram and Rose Cross
rituals come to mind -- but these aren't (at least as I understand 
them) of the nature of barriers.

I wonder, myself, if the spatial metaphor implied by the idea of "shields"
is really the most effective way of dealing with forces that do not seem
to be particularly concerned about space or time.  Might it be at least
as useful to think of a curse, magical attack, hostile nonphysical, or
whatever, not as something external which has to be excluded from a
certain area, but as a disturbance in the relationship between oneself
and the universe, to be resolved by reestablishing harmony in that
relationship?  When I perform the Pentagram ritual, I am reestablishing,
in my own consciousness, the presence of the Divine in the four elements
(you can insert your own metaphor here if this one makes you uncomfortable,
of course), and thus resolving apparent conflict into unity.

This might be particularly useful in the case of those apparent attacks
(etc.) which actually come from within the self.  Raising a barrier to
block out some portion of the universe may be a workable strategy  
(although I would tend to doubt this), but doing the same to some part
of one's own psyche is not.  It seems possible, at least to me, that
such a technique might reinforce the inner disturbances that are causing
the apparent "attack" in the first place.

I'm sure this all sounds very woo-woo and all, but in my own experience
it works, and works well.  Since it's not spatially based, also, it's 
not spatially limited, and thus doesn't require one to choose (for
example) between complete protection and fresh air, as Kethry did in
the first "Spirit in the House" post...

To some extent, this can be seen as a variant of the Simon Iff approach,
with ritual as an adjunct (or, quite possibly, crutch).  At its highest,   
it approaches the use of unconditional love as protection that Amanda
has been discussing; it could well serve as a bridge to that, or as a
vehicle for it.

-- John Michael Greer
   grimoire@u.washington.edu
From: malcolmc@spider.co.uk (Malcolm Campbell)
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Subject: Re: Psychic attack/shielding/empathy
Date: 10 Sep 92 16:20:55 GMT
Organization: Spider Systems Limited, Edinburgh, UK

In article <BuD7n9.81D@acsu.buffalo.edu> oispeggy@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu (Peggy Brown) writes:

   IMO they are based on group-think.  There's an "inner circle" 
   here on alt.magick that sets the standards for what is acceptable 
   and what is not - to think, post, believe.  

   An inner circle member can post something and *not* be subjected to 
   the same level of critical thinking that outsiders endure.

There is a certain amount of truth in this.. I think Shava referred to
it as a baptism by fire.. I dont see it as constructive to attack
postings in this way, particularly when these are the only responses
someone receives, but obviously other people do..

The only way to change this however is to post positive responses to
questions, so that the 'attacks' arent the only responses they get..

--- Malcolm


--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Malcolm Campbell                          |   Spider Systems Limited
                                            |   Spider Park, Stanwell Street
- malcolmc@spider.co.uk   +44 31 554 9424   |   Edinburgh, EH6 5NG, Scotland
Newsgroups: alt.magick