8. You can now begin invoking the being. You should have a pillow or small chair in your workspace that you can sit in to allow as full relaxation and visualization as possible. You may close your eyes at this point, or just begin to focus on your third eye to develop your visualization. You can use your Alpha state anchor again at this point, taking a moment to deepen and focus your state.
9. You may use a spell to initially invoke the being if you wish, or you can simply “vibrate” the name of the being. In either case, you will need to “vibrate the name of the entity three times, either at the end of the spell, or in lieu of the spell. To do this you will imagine the name of the entity in shimmering white letters in your heart from the white light above you as you inhale, and as you exhale, you say the name slowly and melodiously causing a vibration as you imagine the white light letters going out with your breath. Send this breath energy into the amorphous shape, and see your telesmatic image developing in the amorphous energy before you. Three times is of course the ideal, but you can do it more times if you need to in developing your vision.
10. Once you have visualized the being before you, feel it entering and mingling with you. Allow yourself to become one with the being. Commune with the being for as long as you want, receiving knowledge and understanding of the being from within. You may ask questions of the being, or just feel at one with it, receiving knowledge in a transcendental way.
11. When you feel that the communion is over, dismiss the being, thanking it for its participation, and asking that it will return to communicate more in the future if need be. See the figure dissolving away. Make sure that you clearly separate yourself when you dismiss the being.
12. Close your ritual space, performing appropriate banishing ritual for the energy of the being, and the lesser pentagram ritual a second time, and withdrawing all of the energy of your protective circle back into yourself. Do not under any circumstances omit the banishing for any reason. Make sure that all of the energy you’ve invoked has dissipated.
13. Record your experience in your journal.
This technique is ideal for use in groups, in which you let the others ask questions of the being, while you allow yourself to be completely possessed, letting the being answer questions with your mouth. Again, this should probably not be done with negative or lower beings unless you are prepared for the impact.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Seeing the Future
“The vast majority of people who go to 'fortune-tellers' have nothing else in mind but the wish to obtain supernatural sanction for their follies. Apart from Occultism altogether, everyone knows that when people ask for advice, they only want to be told how wise they are. Hardly anyone acts on the most commonsense counsel if it happens to clash with his previous intentions.”
-Aleister Crowley[1]
The only real time is now, this very moment that you are in. The past is gone. It cannot be retrieved. It is just a memory. Equally, the future does not exist, and will only exist when it becomes now. For this reason, seeing the future is a shaky proposition at best. Nothing is written in stone, and we can always alter the path we are currently walking. Certain things seem inevitable, but even these can be changed if we really want to and drastically change our behavior. Billions of factors change the path of manifestation every second. The most we can really hope for in seeing the future is to get a sense of where things are headed right now, with the actions we are currently taking in our lives. We can also get a sense of what sort of unexpected curve balls life is about to throw us.
Do not expect to see your entire destiny with any of these techniques, because you are creating this destiny constantly, and it changes with every new decision that you make. Instead, try to use future thinking to see where your current actions are leading you. I have placed this brief chapter toward the end of the book, in the hopes that you will have developed a certain natural ability to distinguish between the subtle energies of consciousness at this point, and that you will be able to take your future visions with a grain of salt.
Precognition and prognostication are the arts of the seer. Throughout history, great leaders, warriors, kings, businessmen and even hopeful lovers have sought out the advice of wise people whose vision allowed them to see a little more of what was to come than the rest of humanity. It still happens to this day. Many world leaders still consult astrologers, psychics, and their modern, statistical heirs, the futurists. In this chapter we will explore a few simple ways for you to develop metaphysical future vision consciousness within yourself.
Exercise 96 - Developing your Intuition- the Gift of Prophecy
Time Required: 10 to 20 minutes
This is a simple technique for receiving flashes of insight, directly from your superconscious. This will happen fast, in flashes of images and ideas. You must be fairly sensitive to receive these effectively.
Basically, you just have to think of what you'd like to know about, focus upward through the crown of your head to the light of your superconscious mind, and allow whatever images that come to pop into your mind. Just allow impressions to drop in. You will likely receive a multitude of sensations flooding in, a fast series of impressions that you will need to notice quickly.
1. If possible, use your pendulum to make sure your subconscious and superconscious are willing to work right now. There will of course be times when this is not convenient or necessary.
2. Use your anchor to go into the Alpha state.
3. If possible, do a few Kundalini arousing breaths.
4. Tell your superconscious that you want to obtain insight about whatever subject you need to know about. This can really be anything, not just foretelling the future. You can use this technique to solve problems, obtain creative ideas and a plethora of other things directly from the supreme creativity of your superconscious mind.
5. Shift your gaze inward to the top of head, focusing into the light above to receive direct information from your superconscious mind. Relax your attention there, letting your mind flow, allowing whatever comes into your mind to appear. Images may be brief, momentary.
6. You may again ask for the specific information if you are not receiving anything, or clarification of anything you receive. But you should not refuse or ignore any images that you see no matter how vague or momentary. If you do not understand something, or feel that you have missed something, simply ask for more. These images and thoughts may be highly symbolic, and you can sort it all out later.
7. Do not analyze, simply observe what comes, keeping it in your mind, not forgetting anything.
8. Return to normal consciousness slowly and deliberately, intentionally remembering all that you have experienced.
9. Immediately write down whatever you have observed. It is important to write it all immediately, because you will tend to forget it quickly, much like dreaming.
To really get the hang of this technique, try these practical applications:
Ask your superconscious what the next week, month or year will be like
What are the life lessons you are now working on?
Look at the upcoming world situation
Intuit the right place to go or be to experience something profound
See how to get ahead in your career
Invent something
Receive new ideas
Learn how to do something you can't figure out
What are the motives behind someone who's bugging you?
Exercise 97 – Future Timeline
Time Required: 15 to 40 minutes
This is a simple exercise to help you get in touch with where you are heading in your life right now. It may be a bit unpleasant if you are honest with it, and are not heading down the right path. But this is a good thing, because you may be able to steer yourself away from problems, or motivate yourself to take new actions in your life.
1. Use your pendulum to make sure your subconscious and super-conscious are willing to work right now.
2. Use your anchor to go into the Alpha state.
3. If possible, do a few Kundalini arousing breaths.
4. Imagine that you are standing in front of a mirror, looking at yourself, as you did in the exercise at the beginning of this book. Visualize yourself exactly how you are right now. Begin to think about your life, what you are doing day to day, how you are habitually feeling and what you are habitually doing. Are there ways in which you are not getting the most out of your life right now? Are there things which you are doing and feeling that are not positive? Are there things that you should be doing that you are putting off or avoiding? Are there habitual emotions that are limiting you from getting the most out of your life?
5. Shift your gaze inward to the top of head, focusing into the light above. Imagine yourself floating up into this light so that you are moving outside of space and time for the moment. See your future and your past lying beneath you, along some sort of a timeline. This could be a tunnel or passage way, or a series of images, whatever seems appropriate to you.
6. Imagine that you are now floating down into the future on your timeline, so that you are moving ahead five years. Again see yourself standing in front of a mirror, five years older than you are now. Imagine yourself having carried all your emotions, beliefs, thoughts and limitations that you discovered in the last section with you for the last five years. How is your life? Are you heading in the direction that you would like? Do you have all that you want? How have your emotions and thoughts affected events? See, hear and feel how your life will be if you hold onto your limitations for the next five years. Feel the pain that these limitations will cause you, holding onto them for five more years. What will you miss out on? Relationships? Experiences? Opportunities?
7. Do not analyze, simply observe what comes, keeping it in your mind, not forgetting anything.
8. You may extend this further, traveling fifteen or twenty years ahead, dragging with you all of your limitations and negative beliefs. Is this the way you want your life to be?
9. Return to normal consciousness slowly and deliberately, intentionally remembering all that you have experienced.
10. Immediately write down whatever you have observed. It is important to write it all immediately, because you will tend to forget it quickly, much like dreaming.
For most people, this exercise will be a wake up call. We all allow our limitations to severely hamper our actions, and looking at these limitations over the course of our lives can inspire us to real change. If you are honest and really see what the future may hold if you don’t change some of your behaviors and thoughts, you may discover a whole new series of magical operations that you need to begin.
This technique can also be used in another way. You can think about new and empowering beliefs and powers that you are invoking into your life, and see how these positive new things can affect your future for the brighter.
Exercise 98 - How to Induce Prophetic Dreams
Time Required: must be performed at bedtime
This is just a simple variation on dream programming that will allow you to receive dream images that relate to your future. You may want to know something specific, or just wish to see where things are heading in general.
1. When you are interested in receiving a prophetic dream, think about the subject of your interest constantly throughout the day, turning it over and over in your mind. Obsessively puzzle with it as much as possible all day long, all the way up to when you go to bed.
2. When you are getting ready for bed, write at the top of a blank page of your journal, “tonight I will dream about my future…(your subject).”
3. Consult with your subconscious using the pendulum about whether it understands your intention, and is willing to play along.
4. Shift your gaze inward to the top of head, focusing into the light above to receive direct information from your superconscious mind. Relax your attention there, letting your mind flow, allowing whatever comes into your mind to appear. As you are drifting off to sleep, continue thinking about this subject, letting images relating to this subject play through your mind until you fall asleep.
5. When you awaken, write down any dreams whether they relate to your future or not.
Wait a day or two to analyze whether your dreams have any relationship with your question. If you do not get satisfactory results the first time, you can try three or four more times, but if nothing comes, it means that your super-conscious is keeping this information from you. Don't push too hard.
THE TRUE VALUE OF DIVINATION
I was originally contemplating giving instructions on a number of different oracles or systems of divination in this space, but this could easily fill a book of its own. So, I've decided to merely give a quick explanatory note on the general principles of divination, so that you can explore whatever systems you prefer.
Divination can generally be defined as the use of any outside tool to encourage a connection with the world of spirit that will in turn control operations of your hand or brain to obtain some information about the past, present or future. This then includes using the Tarot, Astrology, Bibliomancy, Geomancy, I Ching, reading tea leaves or even a coin toss. You ask a question of the universe, and use the oracular device to interpret the universe's answer.
The wonderful thing about divination is that it places so much of the task of receiving psychic information directly into the hands of the universe. You shuffle cards, or toss coins, or throw runes or bones or whatever, and the forces of the universe give you an answer of their own accord. The skeptic will call this “random chance,” but it is a meaningful chance, because you have imbued it with a question, and some answer invariably comes, even if it seems ridiculous or unrelated. I'm sure we have all asked the “Magic Eight Ball” numerous questions throughout our lives. Even this is a genuine oracle, if approached as such. You will frequently be amazed at the direct connection between the question and answer you receive from any oracle.
But, as one of my teachers recently reminded me, if you consult any oracular device you are making a compact with the universe. The universe is going to provide some sort of answer to whatever you ask, whether you like the answer or not. For instance, if you make a coin toss, you are karmically bound to obey that toss. If you ignore this, you are insulting the spirit of the oracle. I once ignored an oracle for years, and my life really started to stagnate. Once I obeyed the oracle, my life improved dramatically. It is necessary for you to understand that an oracle is a genuine source of information from the consciousness of the universe. It is neither a game nor an illusion.
Oracles are real. Divination has real power to provide you with important insights. But most methods of divination take a good deal of time to learn. Reading ready-made answers to oracles out of a book is next to useless. It is only once you have internalized the meanings of the components of an oracle that their spiritual power really comes to life. You must learn the stories of each element of the divinatory process. If you are using the Tarot, you must become individually intimate with each one of the cards. If you are interested in I Ching or Geomancy, each of the symbols must be memorized and understood. All of these symbols will come to have unique meanings for you, and these meanings will also change over time. One of the best ways that I know of to get in touch with these elements ids through the process of visiting them astrally. I provided complete and simple directions for exploring the Tarot like this in the Practitioner level of The New Hermetics. These same directions could easily be adapted for any divinatory process.
Once you have made the components of these systems a part of yourself and your inner world, reading their messages becomes real magick. The indiidual symbols will just be gates, and you will receive unique messages from each one, every time you use them. When using any divination device, always trust your very first impressions, both at the start, before you've even begun, and through every turn of the process. These quick flashes of insight are where the message resides.
/> Truthfully, if you opened yourself up, getting into the alpha state, you could use any form of divination to a certain degree with no training, simply casting cards or coins or whatever, then allowing whatever impressions come. This requires a good deal of confidence to accomplish, and that confidence comes most easily when you are intimately familiar with your system of divination.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Other Side
“Necromancy has its name because it works on the bodies of the dead, and gives answers by the ghosts and apparitions of the dead, and subterraneous spirits, alluring them into the carcasses of the dead by certain hellish charms, and infernal invocations, and by deadly sacrifices and wicked oblations.”
-Francis Barrett[1]
In this final chapter, we will explore the ultimate mystery, that of the world beyond life, the other side, the realm of the dead. This is one of the most controversial aspects of magick, for a number of reasons. First, we will explore both past lives and communicating with the dead, which would seem to contain a paradox or inconsistency. How can you communicate with someone who is dead if they are reincarnated? This in fact is not an inconsistency, because in communicating with the dead, we are not contacting their essential essence, their higher nature, that part of them that might reincarnate, but rather just their astral shade or phantom, which can remain in the astral light after death, even if the person’s true spirit might be reincarnated, or elevated to some higher plane.
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