Creativity - To Exercise Will Part 3

Success is thy proof

-Liber Al  3:42

To recap:

1. Like the physical and intellectual centrums, the emotional centrum can be educated, exercised and developed far beyond it's common undeveloped and not understood use.

2. Different models and metaphors are employed to communicate about the higher emotional body: Tiphareth in the Qabala, Circuit 6 in Leary's language, the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel (KCHGA) in Crowley's system, Gurdjieff's Higher Emotional centrum or real "I", Jung's individuation etc. Robert Anton Wilson calls it the HEAD revolution in The Illuminati Papers.

3. The heart has its own intelligence that has a connection with intuition.  Intuition can also be exercised and developed far beyond ordinary incapacity to the point where it can be relied upon and trusted most of the time.

4.  Qabala acts as a higher-order language of imagery which both exercises intuition and establishes a common language for the Conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel.  In other words, qabala helps us to learn to communicate with the subconscious, our deep selves, that huge hidden part of ourselves that remains almost completely unknown until we start diving in.  According to Carl Jung, the unconscious mind communicates to the conscious mind through symbols.  Qabala is a language of symbols therefore ideal for linking the subconscious and conscious minds.  By giving it a language, the subconscious (your HGA)  will talk to you.  Robert Anton Wilson (RAW) expressed it well when he said: Beyond a certain point, the whole universe becomes a continuous process of initiation.

That certain point = KCHGA.

Qabala utilizes a model called the Tree of Life,  a metaphor for everything in life being connected.  Everyone who so chooses makes their own individual Tree of Life based on the traditional form and correspondences combined with associations from personal experience.  These personal associations often derive from cultural artifacts - books, music, films etc.  Qabala has been called a filing cabinet of sorts.  Users create their own lexicon.  You basically get your subconscious to talk to you in different ways - through the environment, coicidences and synchronicities, dreams, self observation etc.   Everyone has a unique subconscious mind though they all seem to connect to what Jung labelled the Collective Unconscious.

5. To activate circuit 6 on a consistent basis requires Will, the Will for higher consciousness (True Will) as opposed to the ordinary will of the lower circuits to stick to their agendas known as the will of the machine.  Concentrated attention helps develop and focus Will.  Both Will and Attention can be exercised and made strong.

6.  Through the method of alchemy a permanent  higher emotional body can get crystallized.  The full lotus blossom of the open heart, a living fountain of waters, gets accessed at will.  Love under will suggests that the blood of the higher body (baraka) can be intentionally focused and placed.  Healers do this.

7.  The possibility of permanently activating C6 is available to anyone sufficiently motivated.  Every man and every woman is a star.  This is for anyone who wants to wash their own selves i.e. program and metaprogram their brains and nervous systems anyway they like.

RAW calls C6 the metaprogramming circuit borrowing the term from John Lilly's Programming and Metaprogramming the Human Biocomputer.  Metaprogramming refers to programming the programming, your basic Operating System to continue the computer metaphor.  RAW stresses the importance of C6 when he writes:

Remember: the nervous system is what pre-scientific primates call the "self" or the "soul."  The "self" at the moment depends on which circuit is activated.  The "soul" or metaprogrammer decides which circuit or "self" to be at each time-juncture.  Do you want to choose your own "self" or do you want your "soul" on ice?
 - Illuminati Papers, p. 41

8.  We will call the four lower centrums - the physical, emotional, intellectual, and their aggregate, the social personality - the human circuits. The higher, mostly undeveloped aspects of those centrums - the somatic, the electric/metaprogramming, the genetic, and the atomic/quantum/ non-local circuits - the Being.  Being = non-human.  Another way to distinguish these two aspects of Spaceship WoMan - Human = animal, Being = spirit.  Raising consciousness = the movement of consciousness away from the animal and toward the Being or spirit.  Being seems more like "becoming," but we optimistically stake our territory in the higher dimensions 'as if" we've established permanent residence there.

9. Obstacles arise largely due to the fact the animal doesn't want the Being to grow too much as it feels threatened.  When Being dominates, the animal disappears, it's no longer in charge.  This dichotomy between spirit and animal is addressed in Crowley's Book of the Law (Liber Al):

Is a God to live in a dog?
No! but the highest are of us

It goes on to describe the qualities of "us":

Beauty and strength, leaping laughter and delicious languor, 
force and fire are of us

II:19 and II:20

In the Tiphareth chapter from Illuminatus!  Shea and/or Wilson mentions a "dogfight" a couple of times (p.344) which suggests puns on the dog/god dichotomy and the struggle to permanently set up camp in Tiphareth.  The third chapter of Liber Al starts out giving strategies for this battle.

Energy and rareified awareness - the waking state - come and and go.  Negative emotions can deplete energy.  However, efforts and the experience made to activate the heart always accrue.  Progress occurs nonlinearly in a spiral fashion.   One reason to keep a lab journal of experiments or a diary is to chart one's progress.  It can be helpful later looking back on it to see how far one has gone.  Progress can seem slow or miniscule when measured day by day.  Looking back on journal entries makes it easier to gauge how far one has gone.

A short interlude on the word "God:"

The magick used to activate C6 is predominantly theurgic as opposed to thaumaturgic.  Thaumaturgic magick concerns itself with changing the environment in some way, casting spells, creating love potions etc. or sometimes doing useful things to aid your theurgic arts.   Theurgic magick concerns itself with raising consciousness though its etymology suggests it as magick involved with contacting/invoking a god of one kind or another.  Many otherwise intelligent people get downright suspicious when they hear the word "god" by automatically associating it with organized religion.  Many of us are still deprogramming ourselves from these associations fostered upon us in our formative years.  I suggest that "god" can  be used like a mathematical coefficient, a symbolic representation of a specific functional use.  No one argues whether a mathematical coefficient is real or not.  It's an abstraction that works.  In this way one can remain a committed atheist or agnostic and still take advantage of the god idea to expand awareness and pull oneself up.  Crowley wrote a poem to demonstrate this which I unfortunately don't recall the title to (maybe someone else can?)  In it he eloquently praises the gods of various religions, adores and worships them profusely then ends the poem with the punchline, "Thank God I'm an atheist."

Excellent, scientifically-minded ways to use the god concept turn up in John Lilly's book Simulations of God where he approaches it as a form of self-observation, defining god as whatever you invest the most energy in, what you consider the Highest based on actions rather than a professed ideology or belief.   For instance, someone may nominally declare themselves a Christian or Buddhist yet spend the majority of their time and energy in pursuit of making money.  Their real god, what they really worship is money.  For some it's power, status, drugs, sports, music, health, sex, etc. etc. Lilly goes into much more detail in the book with different god simulation scenarios.

In The Illuminati Papers, a collection or writings mostly from the mid to late '70s, Wilson presents several utopian-like scenarios that he predicted would occur before the end of the millenium.  The predictions appear rational, based on science ( he cites all his references) and observations of prevailing trends.  So what happened?  Perhaps the human species as a whole has defense mechanisms blocking the transition from mechanical living to a conscious life of being?  In the Forewords to Cosmic Trigger I Timothy Leary writes:

It has been axiomatic since Haeckel that ontology recapitulates phylogeny - that the individual in Hir development repeats, step-by-step, the evolution of the species.

The Illuminati Papers is highly recommend in connection with this series of blog posts particularly the essays A Few of the Things I Know about Her and From: The Order of the Illuminati, Sirius Section To: Galactic Central.  The latter gives an elegant presentation of Leary's 8  circuit model of the human nervous system through the game of chess. A later essay, The Goddess of Ezra Pound seems related or one influence on A Few of the Things I Know about Her.  Pound's occult credentials get examined there.  Elsewhere, a review of Beethoven rates as a top piece of music writing found anywhere. RAW begins this book with the headline: "Join the HEAD Revolution." 


10.  This method is eclectic.  We use what works and discard what doesn't the criteria being what will help fulfill our aims.  Once more from the Illuminati Papers (p.67):

The point of systems like Tantra, Crowleyanity, and Leary's Neurologic is to detach from all maps - which gives you the freedom to use any map where it works and drop it where it doesn't work.

This applies to all the systems and models given in these blog posts.  

11.  The open heart, the KCHGA, contact with Being, making the subconscious conscious,individuation etc. = synonymous terms that may reveal one's purpose in life, what's been called True Will.

That seems another of the multitudinous ways to get the higher circuits revved up - find out what you really like to do and do that, align yourself with what you want to use this lifetime for. Developing a passion for something will naturally activate the feeling centrum.  A standard joke in the recording studio is to tell the artist after a take, "One more time please, ... with feeling."

Finding something creative you like to do appears one key for discovering True Will.  Creativity, in every aspect, opens the heart.  When engrossed in the process of creation, artists always seem to use the emotional centrum more than usual.  A search for creative ways of doing things in any art, discipline, or task = a search to open new chambers in C6.  Those new chambers/spaces in C6 can get communicated through art, music, literature, theater, film, poetry etc. Thus artists seeking to take their creative endeavors as far out as possible essentially serve the shamanic function of going into deep extra-dimensions (XD) and bringing something back to communicate the experience to the rest of the world.

This isn't anything new.  Frater Progradior, Frank Bennett, one of Crowley's more successful students gave a lecture in 1917 that included the topic The Perpetual Creativeness of Spirit. ( thanks to Progradior and the Beast by Keith Richmond.)

It appears that artists of various kinds respond the most to Crowley's magick especially musicians from Jimmy Page to Jay Z, Jim Morrison, David Bowie, Lennon and McCartney, Richards and Jagger etc. etc. etc. it's a long list.  Creativity and magick go hand in hand.  Magick teaches one how to invoke, how to draw down energies, information, gnosis from above thereby supplying a constant source for creativity if one has an outlet for it, a way to translate it into art of one kind or another.  Basically, creativity = magick.  Creativity naturally activates and uses the higher circuits. 

Magick works best when approached as an art.  Whether practiced alone or with a group it usually involves theater (inner or external) and poetry of some kind.  Some rituals, such as the Star Ruby, the Thelemic banishing ritual of the pentagram, and Liber Resh, the adoration of the Sun, can get run through thousands of times, but will stay fresh and alive with a creative attitude.   In this way, magick can be practiced under any circumstance from the cramped quarters of a transcontinental jet to driving in your car; in the middle of a crowded restaurant or watching TV.  It can be used extemporaneously anywhere anytime.

Gurdjieff said that we need many different alarm clocks to wake up due to the fact that what works one time won't necessarily work again next time.  The shock value won't be the same.  Esoteric schools disseminate many kinds of tools, games and techniques for exercising attention and waking up.   A creative approach from the student will best design an individual program with those resources to suit one's needs.

One reason a varied, eclectic approach is advised stems from the observation that the machine can get bored easily.  Learning a variety of practices gives the alchemist/shaman a bag of tricks to resort to in different situations.  Never underestimate the power of humor to relieve boredom, dispel despair, worry or other various ills of a recalcitrant human machine not the least of which includes taking oneself too seriously.. 

Last installment, to continue this recap, The Book of Lies by Crowley was described as an alchemical masterpiece.  In an earlier blog post I recounted the story of how this book apparently contains a great secret in either chapters 36 or 69 depending on whom you choose to believe.  Common wisdom ( if there is such a beast) holds that it has something to do with sex.  In the book Pearls of Wisdom, James A. Eshelman makes a cogent argument that "the sexual interpretation is not the perspective from which this ritual (ch. 36 = The Star Sapphire) was first written."  What then, could the secret be if not sex?  I don't know, however, we do know that each chapter has numerical significance.  36 = two sixes multiplied by each other.  69 looks like two sixes in a reciprocal relationship with each other.  The principle of synergy tells us that whenever two systems effectively combine the overall effect of their union contains more than the sum of the individual parts. 

Here we see John Cleese in a sketch that illustrates a not uncommon issue on the magickal path.

 To understand what I'm getting at, it's necessary to have a feeling for the four elements of the ancients: Air, Water, Fire and Earth.   Getting to know these elements, not meant literally, but rather as representations of different types of energy, seems fundamental to the practice of magick.  A primary source of my elemental education came from doing the exercises in Franz Bardon's Initiation into Hermetics.  These elements manifest symbolically for practitioners as magical weapons - The Sword or Dagger for Air, the Cup for Water, the Wand for Fire and the Pantacle for Earth.  Part 1 of Crowley's Magick Liber ABA, after the yoga section has essays on each of the weapons which are valuable for learning about the elements.  Homemade Magick: The Musings and Mischief of a Do-It-Yourself Magus by Lon Milo Duquette is another excellent source.  He also has many creative solutions for practical problems that can arise in the course of ritual workings in everyday life.  Practicing the Golden Dawn style of Enochian invocations makes another excellent method for getting to know your elements.  The Enochian World of Aleister Crowley by Crowley, Duquette and Hyatt serves as an easy how-to manual for that kind of work.

Symbols of the four elements get called upon every time the practitioner performs a Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram or one of its variants like the Star Ruby.  This ritual is to a ceremonial magician what practicing paradiddles is to a drummer, rudiments so basic and fundamental that benefit from constant daily practice until its burned into your soul, or more technically, your body of habits.  Your body of habits takes over when your mind gets blown, reflexive responses to the environment when you have no time to think.

We can imagine John Cleese as a magician with a slight imbalance on the Fire side of things.  Equilibrium of the elements appears necessary for effective magick.  All four elements are there - we see a pitcher and a glass of Water on his desk (the altar), there's Air around him as he sits on Earth (the telephone could represent the KCHGA) while at the end of the video we see what happens with the Fire he has conjured.  Air and Earth appear in abundance, but there's far too little Water to balance the Fire.  When Water and Fire are in ideal proportion it produces "steam' a special kind of Air that can produce much motive force.  The dictionary defines steam as: "the vapor into which water is converted when heated, forming a white mist of minute water droplets in the air."  When you heat up water you get steam.  When you heat up something flammable in a closed container you run the risk of explosion.

Successfully crystallizing C6 seems more a matter of dropping whatever impedes this circuit flow rather than trying to create something not already there.  Being resides with us whether we know it or not.  By relinquishing the sleep of the machine we open up to the awareness of Being however tentative at first.  From Wilhelm Reich's perspective, muscular armor and/or character armor blocks full emotional expression and reception.  This armor apparently gets set in place through past traumas.  I remember years ago when trying to figure out exactly where the hell to begin with the exercises in Gurdjieff's catechism seeing him write that a good place to start work is to lay down and deeply relax the body without falling asleep.  Deep relaxation - letting go.  I learned various magick ritual practices from instructional cassette tapes Israel Regardie of Golden Dawn texts.  He had one called The Practice of the Presence of God that consisted entirely of a guided visualization to deeply relax one body part at a time then fill it with light.

The whole business of the Holy Guardian Angel, started with a medieval grimoire called The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage translated in modern times by MacGregor Mathers.  Mathers was an early teacher of Crowley and one of the founders of the Golden Dawn.  The ritual to attain the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel consisted of a 6 month retreat of purification, cleansing and prayer getting more intensive as the retreat progressed. It seems mostly a matter of clearing out what's in the way to allow the light of the Angel to shine through.

Crowley designed a ritual called Liber Samekh for a more concise but no less involved method to invoke the Angel.  He based it on an ancient ritual picked up by the Golden Dawn known as The Bornless Ritual.  It's divided into sections based on the four elements and the fifth element of Spirit.  It might be that this intends to unify the constituent parts of our human nature toward the common aim of invoking the Higher Self.  We require all the centrums aligned and going in the same direction for this to work.

The element of Fire corresponds with C1, the physical centrum, the will of the body to activate C6.  The Water element corresponds to C2, the feeling centrum, the will of the emotions to go beyond.  The Air element represents the intellectual centrum, the will of thought to go higher.  These three types of machine will are effective when  they are quiet, when they are silent, when their centrums rest in quiesence, not acting out.  When the consciousness of C6 pilots the machine, the body disappears from our awareness, the fight or flight reflex gets bypassed; no disturbing emotions ruffle our inner life, the territorial imperative gets bypassed;  the thinking, head brain chatter vanishes replaced by complete presence in the moment and the task at hand.  The Earth element corresponds with C4 a composite and mix  of the first three circuits that makes up our social personality.  Leary and RAW put sexual behavior in C4, but I disagree.  It seems to me that the sexual force comprises a special area of C1, the body. The fifth element, Spirit represents C5, the transitional circuit where the beginnings of learning to alter our realities for fun and profit takes place.  Gurdjieff called this the magnetic centrum for the ease of attraction to either the higher or the lower depending upon whichever holds sway.

Crowley wrote an extensive commentary to this ritual within which he acknowledges the creative function.  Referring to the line 1 of section G, The Attainment that says:

 I am He!  the Bornless Spirit!  having sight in the feet: Strong, and the Immortal Fire!  he says, "The Immortal Fire" is the creative Self; impersonal energy cannot perish, no matter what form it assumes.  Combustion is Love." 

Regarding line 6 of the same section, I am He, whose mouth ever flameth! he writes:

The Adept realizes every breath, every Word of his Angel as charged with creative fire.  Tiphareth is the Sun, and the Angel is the spiritual Sun of the Soul of the adept.  

This tells something about both creativity as well as the nature of fire.

I present this information not because I proselytize the performance of this ritual, although it couldn't hurt, but rather to extrapolate strategies for our invasion of the Higher Dimensions whether through a magick ritual or some other kind of creative endeavor.  The permanent crystallization of C6, the attainment of the KCHGA, seems a gradual process that can include a variety of practices and techniques ranging from something as simple as learning to play the guitar ( if so inclined) to walking across China with a young wife and infant while using concentrated attention to visualize an astral temple for practice of the Bornless Ritual as Crowley did.  

The interference of the lower circuits is known as "dirt" in esoteric circles.  This point shows itself in chapter 57 of The Book of Lies:

Dirt is matter in the wrong place
Thought is mind in the wrong place
Matter is mind so thought is dirt.

Crowley then proceeds to devise a magick formula from the word PLACE to clarify where he's coming from with this statement.  So much of the work to live with a functional C6 consists of cleaning up the anomalies of the lower circuits - distracting thoughts often taking the form of imaginary arguments or debates, strong negative emotions that take over our mood, bad physical habits that take our energy, etc.  While we can chalk much of it up to our own psychology and past traumas, this can get cleaned up relatively quickly.  However, much dirt accrues through contact and contamination with the environment we operate in.  Just as we bathe everyday to clean our physical bodies from the natural dirt of life, we can also a maintain cleaning regimen for our spiritual lives.  It doesn't need to be complicated, sometimes we can clean both our physical and spiritual selves at the same time with the creative use of  attention.

Some people accumulate more dirt from the environment than others depending upon their job description and so may require strong cleaning solutions.  For instance, a coal miner, or someone who works in law enforcement in a big city will inevitably have more to clean due to occupational hazard.  A concept called Uncus focarius - a fire shovel can come in handy.  You whip up a lot of fire and direct that toward psychic cleaning.  Too much fire can interfere, but can be tempered with water returning to the idea of steam  as an effective locomotive engine.  Cleaning this way is called a steambath.  Some people find various Psalms effective for this kind of operation.  An excellent practice can be found in  The Greater Key of Solomon under the title Concerning The Baths, and How They Are To Be Arranged.  This can be creatively modified according to circumstance.

Listening to music seems a good way to experience the effect of the elements.  Of course, this will be subjective, but just to give some idea:  AC/DC is my hard rock go-to when looking for some blazing fire particularly the Mutt Lange produced Back in Black and Highway to Hell albums.  He really got the sound right on these ones.  I didn't like AC/DC in their 80's heyday until a bar band called Blade Runner  I was mixing played Highway to Hell and the room just exploded, you could feel this tremendous energy afterwards.  Some punk rock has the same effect - London Calling by the Clash and Never Mind the Bollocks by the Sex Pistols come to mind. Caution is always advised when playing with fire of any kind.  Most Rolling Stones live albums and some of their classic studio records, when Jimmy Miller was at the helm, also boosts fiery energy for me.  Tomorrow Never Knows by The Beatles seems a watery song as does Led Zeppelin's Down by the Seaside.  A few albums by Miles Davis also have a significant watery component such as Sketches of Spain, Kinda Blue and In A Silent Way.  Bitches Brew adds more fire to the mix.  African kora music can sound liquidy like cascading waterfalls.  African drumming can be both earthy and fiery.  African dancers can tell or show you how this music transports them far beyond the ordinary.  The most elementally balanced piece of music I know about remains Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.  Feel free to share any other obvious examples in the comments.  Of course, I am barely touching upon the subject.

I'll finish this rather hotch potch post with a Crowley quote from the commentary on Liber Samekh which emphasizes the importance of activating C6.  I've paraphrased a little to remove the male gender bias language:

This then is the true aim of the Adept in this whole operation, to assimilate themself to their Angel by continual conscious communion.  For their Angel is an intelligible Image of their own True Will, to do which is the whole of the Law of their Being.

Also the Angel appeareth in Tiphareth, which is the heart of the Ruach, and thus the Center of Gravity of the Mind.  It is also directly inspired from Kether, the Ultimate Self, through the Path of "The High Priestess," or initiated intuition.  Hence the Angel is in truth the logos or articulate expression of the whole Being of the Adept, so that as she increases in the perfect understanding of Her Name, she approaches the solution of the ultimate problem: Who she herself truly is.