From:    Rose Dawn                              Area: MagickNet
To:      Josh Norton                            23 Nov 94 07:55:46
Subject: Re: CHAOS                              UpdReq 

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
 Howdy!
  > It was actually pretty sudden. True confessions time....
 > 
 > There was a long time -- running from about '71 to '82 -- when I was  
 > getting most of my insights and initiations through other means: the  
 > astrological method I described in "Book of the Archer", conventional 
 > cabalistic invocations, inspirations through smoking dope and doing one- 
 > person sex magick, meditation on magickal and metaphysical writings,  
 > etc. I had plenty out of these methods to fill my head and keep me going 
 > forward. The enochian magick seemed unnecessary.
 Sounds close enough to the way I'm doing things now...do you think you 
*needed* this lengthy period to prepare yourself for--would it be the 
'traditional Abyss-crossing' through Enochian magick? But with more 
conventional work up to that point enabling you to get that far?
  > And to tell the truth, I was afraid of it; it twisted up my head in ways 
 > I wasn't ready to deal with yet. I've always ridden the edge, 
 > psychologically speaking, and it would have pushed me over. I'd do one 
 > of the calls every few weeks, but just for variety from the other stuff, 
 > and without the intensity of will necessary for real effectiveness. Just 
 > playing around, really.
 I really appreciated hearing the above. I guess I've dabbled with more potent 
kinds of work that I knew I wasn't really ready for, but the dabbling wasn't 
really playing around; more like desire bred from desperation, from being 
tired of wallowing in Stage 2, and wanting something to crack all the ice at 
once, or as much as possible, and get it over with. I've been very hesitant 
to do that kinda thing again, and the hesitation stems from fear. What you've 
said above indicates that it might be a 'healthy' kind of fear, simply 
avoiding things you aren't ready to deal with until you *are* ready to deal 
with em...I got pretty bummed for a while, feeling that if I was hesitant or 
afraid to do *anything* I probably wasn't cut out for magick. Heh, the old 
saying about 'no courage without fear' just popped into my mind.
  > Finally the "dryness" got so bad that I was in a state of -- "manic 
 > desperation", I guess. Nothing mattered except getting OUT -- even if it 
 > meant blowing myself to bits, spiritually speaking. The mania overcame 
 > my fear, and I dove into the enochian magick as a full-time practice. 
 > Did an invocation every day, and tried to get a vision twice a week or 
 > so. Didn't get much of real significance out of it until I started 
 > getting really methodical about it a couple of years later, but at least 
 > I felt like I was moving again. (The fear, incidentally, burned itself 
 > out somewhere in the process.)
 Interesting. I've experienced a bit of the manic desperation, but so far it's 
always receded again. Not without fallout a couple times!  ;>  I suspect it's 
been a gradual leading up to the point where I'm ready for 'more' again...how 
*much* more I couldn't say at this point.
 Thanks for all the above.
 Love is the law, love under will.

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