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Diaryland
On the Abramelin Operation July 10, 2008 @ 11:56 a.m.
Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage Webgroup
Glad to see the list is getting active again :)
I ordered [William] Bloom's book ["The Sacred Magician"] with a lot of excitement and anticipation and ended up really dissapointed with it. It should have been entitled "On the groveling of a worm", because that's exactly what he ends up doing for most of it. You find a little bit of insight here and there, but for a diary his notes are remarkably useless and unillustrative. Plus he throws around a lot of obscure and unnecessary material from Ascension spirituality that you can't understand really unless you're familiar with Alice Bailey and such.
You can do the rite in 6 months, but it seems to me to be more forced and squeezed, and perhaps harder on the candidate. With the longer time you have a chance for things to grow more naturally, and you'll also learn more along the way so that things are easier and you've got a better foundation for jumping off from once you've completed it.
In my opinion, Bloom's experiences were not really that fantastic. I think that a lot of times he was reading between the lines and projecting import and meaning where there was none. It sounds like it would have been really difficult to be his wife (or was it partner?) at the time. Nonetheless, this doesn't really surprise me, because to a degree, you have to get very self-involved with an operation like this. When you're doing Abramelin, you can become very obsessed with meaning and the whole world and everything in it can take on symbolic significance that has no real relevance outside yourself and your operation. The ego gets very, very paranoid, and satisfies its urges through both self-aggrandizement and self-debasement. Control of attitude and thoughts is still better than no control to our ingrained personalities. Being put in perspective can be terrifying.
Don't judge your own experience in contrast to those of others, especially with an operation of such a personal character. The special effects are not important compared to the personal changes you undergo from within. First seek the Kingdom of God, and the signs will follow.
We all receive the satanic visitation in different forms that are actually personally suited to our own particular neuroses. I'm inclined to think that in the process of summoning our personal angel and agathodaemon, we can't help but attract the equal and opposite force of our personal cacodemon. The demons are actually at work throughout the operation, but they seem to make their biggest appearances at the beginning and at the end. Abraham emphasizes that among all kinds of objections, they particularly try to dispute with us on matters of religion and spirituality. I found this to be very, VERY true! Dee and Kelly were confronted by a glamourous man in their scrying, who tried to convince them that everything they had channeled was false. Meeting my own adversary was like finding my doppelganger from another universe and seeing what could have occured and who I would have become had I embraced a different path. I found reason to be powerless against him, and in the end I had to rely on faith and the intuitions of my heart.
I began to learn from that point on that all of this training is really a journey beyond the sphere of Understanding - personal or collective. Wisdom and the Fullness are superrational and require us to go beyond the abyss of our own perceptions, reasonings, and understandings. Later in my operation, when I summoned the four demon emperors, Satan accused me of being completely arrogant and narcissitic - doing this whole operation for nothing more than self-aggrandizement and imagining myself to be pious and "spiritual" when in reality I'm just egotistical. I had to really consider what he said and meditate on it later with more divine perspective. The old adage is true: there's always a kernal of truth to what the demons tell you, but they distort things and don't have the whole story. For them, everything is seen through the eyes of ego and animal instincts.
Faith, love, and hope, David
"Details in the Fabric" - May 31, 2009
Not So Quick Questions - April 6, 2009
The Morning Stars - Lords of the 15 - April 9, 2009
Sincerity and Faith in Magic - April 10, 2009
Not So Quick Questions (2) - April 14, 2009
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