Thursday, February 23, 2012

Initiators

For those of you that may someday get initiated into some a magick group. Listen to my tale and be armed.

My first initiation was into a BTW trad. One of the initiators, yeah, think of that for a moment trad people, was obsessive. I became obsessed within a very short time. In speaking with friends that knew me before and after, I was not obsessed prior that initiation. Yes, I had some tendencies. Otherwise, whatever happened to cause the obsessive thoughts would not have found purchase. Further traumatic events within that group only served to make things worse.

I have also gone through many Golden Dawn style initiations. Two of which were performed by Sam Webster, founder of the Open Source Order of the Golden Dawn (OSOGD). At Pantheacon I overheard two people talking. One of them said, "Sam brilliantly combined the Golden Dawn with Buddhism."

Fast forward to myself at lunch today. Once again I was reading of Buddhism. Yet again, I found passages that very neatly reflected my interpretations of the Manifestation Meditation. There have been several incidents prior to this. One of these included my writing a passage that I later found nearly verbatim in a book by the Dalai Lama.

Obviously, if I can link my obsession to a bad initiation, I can link my connection from my Manifestation Meditation to Buddhism and Sam's initiation.

I have to say that seeing such links is very subjective. The first one was pretty obvious with retrospect. The second is more questionable but I am leaning toward believing it.

So, here is a public thanks to Sam Webster for helping to link me to something more than I was seeking. I'm sure he didn't do it on purpose but some times, good things happen when good intentions meet good luck.

Manifestation Meditation

Last night I performed this not as a meditation but as a variation of the Middle Pillar exercise. The first time, I had a dream about a huge airplane. This time, my performance was questionable. My working partner with the Conclave of the Greek Key, had a dream about a very large thing, me.

She said that I was so large filled the hallway. I was wearing a Chewbacca mask (brown), a clown suit  (grey), with bike horn (Black/White), lobster claws for hands (red), duck feet (yellow). My size in the dream scared her. When I noticed that I took off the mask and said, "Don't worry, I wear this to work all the time," and honked the bike horn.

Could this bee some corruption of earth (furry mask), the an unmanifested Fool (grey clown suit), initiation halls (black/white), fire (red claws), air (yellow feet), water (duck feet or lobster reference)? Frankly, it seems a stretch to me but I am doing my due diligence in recording it.


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The colors remind me more of the four colors of Malkuth than anything else. As the base of the middle pillar, this may be a sign that you're starting to get somewhere. The rest seems a commentary on how committed you are to letting go of yourself in the process - - - the changes were masks and costumes, and you were able to take off the mask when you wanted to.


raxivar@yahoo.com aka Raendome Al Askendir Xtranj

Robert said...

Very interesting point of view! Thanks for stimulating some thought.

Andrew B. Watt said...

A few years ago, I had a student who was ready for (an) initiation, and I put together a ceremony to wake up the magic inside of him. It was pretty effective at waking the magic up — but I think he got some of my hesitancy, and my caution. It's a complex relationship between initiator and initiated, and not at all an easy one to mediate.