#24 1 01 Feb 86 03:34:19 (RECV'D) From: Usenet on 132/101 To: Brad Hicks on 100/523 Subject: O.T.O. sex magicc Date: Sat Jan 25 20:42:29 EST 1986 From: "New Age Moderator" New Age Digest #35 Moderator: Tim.Maroney@k.cs.cmu.edu uucp: {decwrl,seismo,ucb-vax,lll-crg}!k.cs.cmu.edu!tim) Sat Jan 25 20:42:33 EST 1986 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Tonight, at long last: Moving to California on Feb. 1 Re: anti-psi software Re: various topics Tarot info request Re: the secrets of O.T.O. sex magick ---------------------------------------- Date: Sat Jan 25 20:01:16 EST 1986 From: Tim Maroney Subject: Apology and Important Information I am sorry that so much time has elapsed since #34. I should send out short digests when items get old, but frankly I am always glad to have an excuse to avoid this chore. Not that I don't like the Digest, it's just that shaping it up and sending it out is a pain in the eleventh degree.... Now for the news. In one week, I will be moving, together with my companion Pam, to Berkeley California. I have a new job, with a startup Appletalk company called Centram Systems West. This old address at CMU will have forwarding for a while, but I wouldn't count on it for more than a month. Between uninformed, hateful bullshit from the system staff, and CMU's belief that they have an interest in seeing the planet destroyed -- oops, I mean to say, "developing our Peace Shield" -- there doesn't seem much reason to hang around this cold place any longer. Oh well, I learned a lot and had some fun. I have no regrets, but it's time for me to move on. I don't believe Centram is on the uucp network yet, though as chief UN-X person I will be fixing that if so. (Or I may be using the mt xinU machines...) However, John Gilmore and Laura Creighton have kindly agreed to let the mailing list be based on their home system. This is only a little bigger than my Macintosh (sun 3, 480 megabytes on line), but for our purposes it should suffice. :-) John's machine is named "hoptoad", formerly "l5". It is in San Francisco. >From ARPA, the feed is "lll-crg". The mailing list address will be "hoptoad!new-age@lll-crg", or from uucp, try "{well,sun,dual,ptsfa,lll-crg}!hoptoad!new-age". Note that due to John being a friendly person, unlike the people I would have had to go through at CMU, there will be a real mailing-list-type address, not just my personal login. My mailing address, at least provisionally, will be "hoptoad!tim". I will replot everyone's addresses, though if you want to write and suggest a good address to your site from Northern California, feel free. The information in the USENET list of lists will be updated, and I will probably list this in the ARPA list of lists as well. I also want to apologize for being even worse with my mail than usual, though that is somewhat hard to believe, I know. I'll try to catch up during February, if I can get time between house-hunting and work. ---------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 1 Dec 85 21:18:44 pst From: ihnp4!chinet!magik@decwrl.DEC.COM Subject: Re: anti-psi software STella, I've had the same musings myself in regard to the suppression of psi. My working assumption is that my higher self withholds knowledge from me that I have not properly trained myself to conciously control. A sort of natural self preservation. (when I am ready to handle a new level in life someone/thing shows up in my life to show me the way) ---------------------------------------- From: amdcad!ihnp4!pegasus!lzla!tek@decwrl.DEC.COM Date: Thu, 12 Dec 85 13:05:41 pst Subjects: sundry Re: Tim Maroney (trinities), New Age Digest #33 In your comments about dualities and trinities in religion you touched on something. Is it human nature or natural law? I believe that it's connected to natural law. Let's not forget those prime numbers! Five, seven, and thirteen have special meanings in many of the world's religions. What do others have to say on this??? Re: Stella Calvert (Anti-psi Software), New Age Digest #34 I vote for case 2. I have two children and have been training them to develop their psi. How? It's simple don't discourge them and coach them on! I believe we learn not to use our psi when children. There can be many reasons but I think the best one is that if a child is not encouraged they don't develop in that direction. It's the middle of the road reaction which produces no effect. If the child gets a very negative reaction they will probably supress it but there is a chance that they will develop it out of rebellion. The best avenue is that of encouragement and reward. The reward could be as simple as a hug or positive verbal reinforcement. This is my belief and I'm not saying this is the law... It's just my experience. Now for us who are past childhood... My experience has been it is totally tied up in belief systems. "You can because you think you can." Not just your logical rational mind, but all of you. I read Johnathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach, in childhood and it helped me a lot! Illusions is very useful also. I've read Illusions many times. Every time I read it I get more convinced it is a real story! On the other hand my logical mind tells me no, no it can't be real.... I find it a help to keep the psi flowing. New subject: Ram Dass, NYC, Dec 8, 1985 I just attended a lecture given by Ram Dass last night. It was the first time I got to see him in the flesh. For those that were wondering what he's doing these days, read on... He was in the east at a Buddhist meditation camp for a couple of months. Meditations ran from 3AM til 11PM and consisted of following your breath, or walking meditation (following your feet). He was to be there for three months but left after two because he felt he had to go back to Boston to take care of his father. He's now director of an organization that Wavey Gravey pushed to get started. It's called SEVA. Its purpose is to eliminate blindness in the 3rd world. I was surprised (small world) that SEVA is supported by a small computer teleconferencing buisness. What a new idea (ha ha)! He states that 80% of blindness in the world can be cured or prevented... Well I could go on some more but I've probably said enough. If you are interested in further details or any of the new stories he told send me mail... ihnp4!pegasus!lzla!tek ---------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 2 Jan 86 15:46:55 est From: umcp-cs!aplvax!osiris!jcp@seismo.CSS.GOV (Jody Patilla) Subject: Tarot inquiries As a Christmas gift, my brother gave me a very unusual modern Tarot deck featuring fanciful Cat People. It is very attractive, the suit cards as well as the major trumps, and is accompanied by some information as to the meaning in divination of each card, and how to read a 6 card spread. I have not really studied Tarot before this, though I am interested, and now I want to order a Thoth deck and perhaps one other to compare the decks and learn more about it. In the early issues of the Digest, a couple of people recommended some books about Tarot: I saved those and now would be interested in further discussion, especially about the meanings of different decks and different methods with which people use them. Jody Patilla ---------------------------------------- Date: Fri Jan 24 06:25:17 EST 1986 From: Tim Maroney (tim@k.cs.cmu.edu) Subject: O.T.O. sex magic STella: First, though by this time you've probably forgotten you thanked me, you're welcome. Glad I was just being paranoid about offending you! As per David Sher's criticism, in my new drafts of my "Thelema Sutra" I am making it more obvious where Crowley ends and Maroney begins. (Thanks, David!) The correlation of the components of romantic love to the elements was mine and should have been marked as such. Incidentally, the new versions are so much improved that readers of my tryout drafts would barely recognize them. I appreciate in particular those people who told me they found the chapters incomprehensible; the new drafts should make sense even for someone who has little experience with occult symbolism (though you will still have to stop and think sometimes...) This sort of criticism is invaluable; one indication of a flaw is worth a hundred "Hey, good job"s! Of course, if I didn't get the encouragement too I would probably give up. As you know, I prefer to point people to the sources containing the information on the O.T.O. sex magic rather than explaining it explicitly. This gives me a wonderful feeling of superiority to the poor idiot who asked the question. On analysis, this does not seem like a very good basis for behavior, so I've changed my mind. However, my essay on the O.T.O. will not be made available until (and unless) my book is published, unlike other chapters which I will be marketing as magazine articles first. So for a full explanation you will have to wait. However, a summary is in order here. Sex magick proper is confined to the third triad of the O.T.O., eighth degree and up. (The seventh degree reportedly contains a practice on consecrating and worshipping the image of a phallus, in a way reminiscent of Indian practice, where such images have always been the most common objects of devotion.) The eighth degree practice is described in "Liber A'ash". Briefly, one masturbates to an image of the deity, allowing its image to fill and enflame consciousness. The ninth degree practice involves heterosexual intercourse. The mind is kept focussed on the intent of the ritual. The sexual fluids of the man and woman are collected and used to consecrate a talisman, or more commonly as a Eucharist. This elixir is symbolically a complete macrocosm. The eleventh degree practice is almost too gross to describe; Crowley referred to it as sucking down stolen fire in a hollow tube from heaven in a way no adept had dared to do before. For the unremittingly dense: This is like the ninth degree practice, but involving the anus rather than the vagina. The Thelemic practice of destroying one's aversions, it seems, would be a prerequisite to eleventh degree practice. These are only the physical formulae. One of Crowley's biggest jokes, I think, was the idea that there was ONE "secret of the O.T.O.". In fact, a number of clues from different places have to be put together, and the whole network of deception is set up in such a way that one will tend to think one has gotten it all (and stop looking) once the physical formulae are discovered. The editors of the journals appear to have fallen into this error, for instance. Another joke is that ONE chapter of the "Book of Lies" gives the formula. In fact, that book's whole story of Crowley's entry into the O.T.O. is probably false, a deliberate ruse to prevent the secrets from being extracted from the book. Not only does the chapter "The Star Sapphire" embody a ritual of the ninth degree, but vital doctrines are dispersed all throughout the book. For instance, the identification of family members with each other in "The Star Sapphire" clearly has to do with the unity of parent and child explained in other chapters; this further bears on the secret or seminal (one might almost say sociobiological) will discussed in several chapters. Finally, bring in the connection between death and begetting frequently referred to, and consider this in the light of the infamous note in "Magick in Theory and Practice" concerning sacrifice. The whole formula emerges (I think): The elixir is mystically identical with the magician. In accord with the frequent instructions in "The Book of Lies", the magician "kills himself" by consuming or fixing the elixir. This self-slaying formula would appear to apply to all three practices. Oh yes, in the ninth degree I think the woman is supposed to be on top. But Crowley may have considered this a point of personal preference. It is not very strongly stressed, compared to these other points. There are also some variations on the formula, which I have not extensively catalogued; this includes, for instance, the breathing practices referred to by Crowley in his "New Comment" on the relevant verse of Hadit. Since this is mentioned nowhere else that I have noticed, I assume this is a variant, not strictly necessary to the formula. There is also a less concealed but also less fully developed sixty-nine formula; I mention it because all the formulae listed above exclude lesbians, which is hardly fair. This is all from decoding, in the light of whatever grasp of magick I have acquired. My membership in the O.T.O. did not incorporate sex magick instructions, because I decided to leave the group after administrative incompetence deep-sixed my fourth attempt to arrange to take the next degree past the Minerval degree, which is numbered 0. (Or perhaps I was being asked to leave. It hardly matters now.) I have not experimented with these particular techniques of invocation; my Neophyte work in the A.'. A.'. system, which I follow on a solo basis, keeps me engaged for now. Astral projection without drugs is not easy! Perhaps I'll start experimenting with sexual invocations in another three or four years: "Liber A'ash" is not only eighth degree O.T.O., but Dominus Liminis A.'. A.'. . By the way, on psi-squelching in software. I don't believe in psychic powers, though I have no disrespect for those who do, and I hope to continue to see interesting discussions of psi here. But I would be remiss in my skeptical duties if I failed to point out that the idea of psychic barriers preventing powers from manifesting seems like the idea of the "nemesis" as explained by Frazer. When a spell doesn't work, the shaman always has an excuse -- some rival sorceror has blocked it, or the gods said no, or some other "explanation" that only has explanatory power if you assume that there ARE psychic powers. Another modern Nemesis is the presence of skeptics: how strange it is that unconscious psychic powers in the psychically undeveloped skeptic should so easily overcome the highly sharpened and deliberate psychic powers of the test subject! But, hey, maybe this is just reductionism, and your model is right. The use of the Nemesis principle SUGGESTS that it is not right, but it can not be said to PROVE it. Who knows? The world is a very weird place, and none of us is free of error in perceiving it. Congratulations on your wedding! Tim --------------------- End of New Age Digest --------------------- * Via Fido 100/51