I have failed at my attempts to create a golem, primarily for lack of trying. Following the directions in Aryeh Kaplan’s translation and commentary on the Sefer Yetzirah (1997, Samuel Weiser, Inc.), I attempted to complete the complex meditation on the 231 gates. It’s very complex, really. The practitioner must meditate upon the 22 letters of the Hebrew alef-bet surrounding him in a ring, and then slowly create and follow paths or “gates” between each of them in order. A golem is typically to be created only as a thought construct, and Kaplan explains that one was created as a physical entity only on the most special of occasions. The act of building a golem required great discipline, concentration, and visualization. The golem-builder needed to be righteous and spiritually pure, which requires quite a bit of work and effort on its own.

My attempt was part of a series of experiments I have been conducting on thoughtforms, which are an old and far-reaching idea in metaphysics. From a psychological standpoint, a thoughtform seems to be a compartmentalized part of the personality whose purpose is to complete a specific task, or perhaps a sub-personality which is created and embedded in the unconscious for a specific period of time. Of course, as with many metaphysical activities, a psychological approach doesn’t quite seem to explain the subjective changes that happen in the metaphysician’s situation. It might help to think of a thoughtform as a metaphysician’s “familiar spirit,” or perhaps like an imaginary friend for adults. This imaginary friend is, however, created with much deliberation and zeal.

Continue reading →

Performance, Thaumaturgy, and Physical Magic

by

Igneus Lumen 

Not so many years ago, I was a stage performer. My acts consisted of a variety of flamboyantly dangerous feats, usually with scantily clad (or unclad) female assistants as props, and eventually targets.  I performed in a variety of contexts, ranging from circuses to cabarets to avant-garde theater to big-venue rock shows and fetish events, and experienced some limited and mostly underground success and fame in these endeavors.  By the end, I was performing before rather large audiences.

I learned that when thousands of eyeballs are fixed on you, watching your every movement, believing in you, Willing you to amaze them, you become larger and more potent than you were.  You become, via our primitive animalistic mechanisms of human interconnection, amplified and enlarged.  You transcend normal humanity and become something different and other, an elemental archetypal creature glowing with a nimbus of focused energy, at least for a few magic moments.  Anyone who has ever physically attended a good performance as part of a large enthralled crowd has felt a little of this. And, anyone who has performed in such an event has experienced something akin to this — it is a fundamental and universal aspect of human group interaction, albeit an ephemeral, transient, and poorly understood one.

Continue reading →

The Modern Resurgence of the Mystery Schools and its Antecedents [1]

by

David L. Heifetz, Esq.

In classical antiquity, the initiatory mystery schools were one of the primary means of transmission for esoteric and metaphysical concepts and techniques.  The “secrets” they passed to their initiates were the secret teachings of the mainstream religions of the day — ideas and concepts that supplemented and embellished the established civic religious beliefs and practices — and were available only to those found worthy, in many cases, the intellectual elite of the various societies in which they flourished.

From what little knowledge has survived about these groups, we know that their structure and content varied considerably.  The Cult of Pythagoras, the Eleusinian Mysteries, the Mithraic Mysteries, the Dionysian Mysteries, the Orphic Mysteries, and a variety of others all had specific and unique secrets which were shared only with their initiates. Many had various levels of initiation or grades each with their own secret teachings, for instance, The Eleusinian Mysteries consisted of the Lesser and Greater Mysteries of Eleusis, whereas the Mithraic Mysteries had an elaborate hierarchy with seven grades or degrees of initiation.  In their day these various Mystery Schools were both highly regarded by and important to the societies in which they flourished.  Their membership was non-exclusive, and there is evidence that it was common practice for a esoterically inclined person of adequate means to travel the Classical world and be initiated in the various Mysteries as a completion of his education.

Continue reading →

Invoking the King of Portland

by

Hadogenes Phaeton

In my wanderings through my amazing city, I came upon an old craftsman bungalow in fine condition which seemed to be owned by fairly clean, creative, artistic types. The house was painted interesting colors, and in its front yard was a stylized throne wrapped in wire and glass baubles, about the size that a skinny kid could fit into, but not a grown adult. It stood on the walkway leading up to the house, looking out over the residential intersection as if surveying its domain. “Such a throne,” thought I, “would be fit for the King of Portland.” And then my imagination and intuition grasped onto this idea, which remained with me.

I imagined the King of Portland as a local deity, a god of a place, which is an old tradition springing probably from the animistic beliefs of so many of our early tribes and religions. Animism is the belief that inanimate objects can be spiritual beings. It is almost a type of monism, positing that there is no separation between the spiritual and the material. At times, when considering animism, I have been conscious of the strong pull of anthropomorphization, which can be a dangerous trap that leads the mind into misunderstanding all sorts of local phenomena, animals, and observations. But none of these notions kept the King of Portland from my mind.

Continue reading →

Sleep and Metaphysical Work [1]

by

Igneus Lumen

Sleep and Dreams are an important facet of the life and Work of a practitioner of Metaphysics.  One’s sleep patterns are important to understand, as the quality, quantity, and rhythms of one’s sleep greatly affect his mental states and his mental acuity.  Therefore, if behooves the Metaphysician to understand and control his sleep cycle. [2]

I. Polyphasic and Bimodal Sleep

Evolutionarily speaking, humans have only very recently started sleeping for eight hour blocks in the evening, this pattern emerging only after the advent of reliable indoor artificial lighting in the last few hundred years.  In earlier, cruder and more natural environments, the notion of long blocks of deep sleep was profoundly dangerous.  Rather, we, like all other mammals, evolved to sleep lightly for short blocks of time.  Even today for most people a “long cycle” of deep sleep is only about 90 minutes (often segued together for longer blocks).  A short cycle is closer to 45 minutes, thus an effective nap for most people is either 45 or 90 minutes. [3]  The scientific community refers small broken up patches of sleep as “Polyphasic Sleep” or “Ancestral Sleep.”

Continue reading →