You are now able to access all of the Lucid Dreaming resources which I have on my website from one page. This includes my thesis on Lucid Dreaming, my recent video course on the subject, and an index of relevant blog posts.
For more details see the link in my site’s navigation bar, or click here.
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The Magus Trilogy – three novels full of murder, sinister black magick and steamy action – and now for a trial period only, going for $0.99 each! You are now able to buy my three novels in ebook form for less than a dollar each. The Magus, Opus Secunda and Licence to Depart – are available from SMASHWORDS in all popular ebook formats, as well as from Amazon.
 Front cover artwork © 2009 by the author. |
 Front cover artwork © 2010 by the author. |
 Front cover artwork © 2011 by the author. |
To download a free Kindle reader, please go here.
Filed under Books, Licence To Depart, Opus Secunda, The Magus
Constance: The Tragic and Scandalous Life of Mrs Oscar Wilde
Death or Palsy
In the original Golden Dawn, this was described more colourfully as:
…the awful penalty of voluntarily submitting myself to a deadly and hostile current of will set in motion by the chiefs of the Order, by which I should fall slain and paralyzed without visible weapon as if slain by the lightning flash.
At Whare Ra this was rendered:
…a deadly Stream of Power, set in action by the Divine Guardians of this Order, Who, Living the light of their Perfect Justice, can, as tradition and experience affirm, strike the breaker of this magical obligation with death or palsy, or overwhelm him with misfortune.
In the Bristol Temple of the Stella Matutina, whence Regardie half-inched the rituals that he published in The Golden Dawn
…a Stream of Power, set in motion by the Divine Guardians of this Order, Who live in the light of their Perfect Justice, and before Whom my Soul now stands.
So basically we can infer that the penalty was meant to be some pretty heavy-duty magic, like being struck down by a lightning bolt – only the Bristol temple decided to water it down and make it sound like some kind of fluffy-bunny politically correct version.
Now some people with an interest in esoteric Freemasonry – or at least, those people who remain in Freemasonry longer than two minutes so they can appreciate how esoteric it can be – will be aware of the Symbolic Penalties. Furthermore, they may be interested to know if they are not already aware that after you see through all the blood and gore, each Symbolic Penalty relates to a chakra: the first to the Throat; the second to the Heart; the third to the Solar-Plexus. This has further led people like Sebottendorf
Now let’s look again at the original Golden Dawn obligation. Whilst the Cipher Manuscript merely talks about death or palsy, the version created by Mathers says: “as if slain by the Lightning Flash.” Oh-ho! The Lightning Flash is also the symbolic arrangement of the Sephiroth on the Tree of Life! So perhaps Mathers too had this instinctive grasp of the relation between the Symbolic Penalty and the Energy Flow. Perhaps the real meaning – i.e. the real nuance that Mathers was trying to convey – was that if a Neophyte did not integrate the lightning flash (i.e. the Tree of Life) in his or her soul, then they would end up being destroyed by it instead. If this be true, and it appears quite reasonable, then we have to thank Mathers and his knowledge of the true value of Freemasonry for getting this point across.
There is however one problem with this whole business of being slain by the Lightning Flash, and that for all the oath-breakers in the original Golden Dawn there is no evidence that any of them ever suffered it. Until now. Some enterprising historian has actually discovered that at least one member of the Golden Dawn was actually struck down from creeping paralysis and was overwhelmed with misfortune after she left the order: Constance Wilde, wife of the famous playwrite. In a story published in the Sunday Express today, it is alleged that Constance Wilde left the order after only a year as a member and revealed such as she had learned to her husband. Everyone is familiar with the calamities that befell Oscar thereafter, but apparently she herself died aged 40, after having suffered from paralysis in her arms and legs.
Crikey! So the deadly stream of power does work after all! Ironic, then, that with all the people who did break their oaths and damaged the order, she was the only to succumb. Even more ironic is the fact that if you read Wilde’s output there is no evidence that he made use of any of Constance’s secrets. Want more irony? The first London production of Salome was put on in 1905 … directed by Florence Farr. 😉
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This is my first experiment with vlogging. This is a live version of an Invocation to Jupiter which I featured last year on my website.
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Damon Albarn
Damon Albarn (Gorillaz, ex-Blur) has previously composed an operatic version of Monkey: Journey to the West in 2008. Now he has revealed his new project – “Doctor Dee” which is based on the life of John Dee, the celebrated Elizabethan Mathematician, bibliophile – and Occultist.
Dr John Dee was famous in his lifetime for assembling the largest private collection of manuscripts in Europe in his house at Mortlake in Surrey, for inventing the idea of the “British Empire” and even for teaching Queen Elizabeth I the rudiments of Alchemy. However he became notorious for his Spirit communications – which are the basis of Enochian Magic today.
Doctor John Dee
Said Albarn:
“It’s just amazing how much colour there is in his ideas. Just imagine the English now if we had kept that spirit in our hearts.”
The opera is being staged (in English) at the Palace Theatre in Manchester on July 1st.
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Yes I do really look like this in real-life! 😉
Facebook is apparently introducing a new Facial Recognition feature which is going to suggest tags for your photos, based on their similarity to other photos already on the site. Now whilst a lot of civil liberties campaigners have immediately like a trout to the fly jumped and shouted “invasion of privacy” etc etc etc I am feeling faintly amused by the fact that if it actually works, everyone who uploads a picture of Eliphas Levi’s Baphomet is going to have “Alex Sumner” suggested as a tag for it.
This has given me an ace marketing idea! What you need to do is to hire someone who has a passing resemblance to a famous celebrity, and get them to be the “face” of your campaign. Then find all the photos you can of this celebrity and tag them with your “mascot.” Sooner or later, the Facial Recognition feature will kick in and everytime someone uploads a new photo of the celebrity, they will get a tag suggestion for the mascot instead! Then they will be like “WTF? Why is this guy getting tagged in the photo?”
Obviously this is a completely Black-Hat strategy, and hence I strongly advise anyone from actually implementing this. 😉
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In 1978, when Attack of the Killer Tomatoes was released, audiences laughes at vegetables rising up against humanity. Come 2011 with the current E-Coli outbreak, they’re not laughing now.
It is all to do with the recent Rapture. Now the first of the tribulations is occurring – Vegetable Apocalypse!
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It’s that time of year again when Black Metal bands think its really kewl to release new albums – yes it is 6/6 day, or Great Beast Day as I have “antichristened” it. No doubt at around 6pm local time wherever you are, expect to see a lot of tweets on Twitter about Satan and what not.
666 is of course most famous from Revelation 13:18, whence comes its popularity in modern culture, from eschatology to horror novels & films (e.g. The Omen), rock music, etc. Aleister Crowley famously dubbed himself “The Great Beast 666” – partly out of re-action against his religious upbringing, but also to assert the Humanistic nature of Thelemic spirituality, i.e. as far as Crowley was concerned, the number of the Beast was not just the number of a particular man, but of Man generally.
Other writers (e.g. Rudolf Steiner) have identified the Great Beast as a being called “Sorath” – whose name in Hebrew Gematria (Samekh + Vau + Resh + Tau) enumerates to 666. This presents a tiny problem for ceremonial magicians (or at least the ones who claim not to be Satanists). According to Henry Cornelius Agrippa, the Intelligences and Spirits of the various Planets all have names whose gematria is associated with the Magic Square of the planet. The magic square of the Sun is a 6*6 grid containing the numbers 1 to 36. Each row adds up to 111, whilst the total for the whole grid – the 36th triangle number in other words – is 666. The Intelligence of the Sun is “Nakhiel,” the gematria of which is 111, whilst the Spirit is (you’ve guessed it) Sorath – for the gematric reasons stated previously. Hence when magicians perform a Qabalistic ceremony to invoke the forces of the Sun, e.g. to perform an evocation or consecrate a talisman, etc, they will wind up calling on Sorath. Magicians who purport to be of the right-hand path justify this by saying the only do so after first invoking all the divine and angelic Solar beings first, so that nasty old Sorath is not running wild, but is safely under control of the forces of light.
I am not alleging hypocrisy of any kind … too much … but this rationalisation starts to break down when it comes to practising the art of Geomancy. As far as the Golden Dawn is concerned, geomancers are encouraged to invoke a “Geomantic spirit” of the planet which most pertains to the question which they are attempting to answer. These Geomantic spirits are the same as the planetary spirits listed by Agrippa – so when a Geomancer attempts a Solar question, they will again find themselves calling upon Sorath – only this time they are not told to invoke the superior divine and angelic names first.
There are three possible conclusions to be drawn – magicians of the Golden Dawn are really closet devil-worshippers; writers like Rudolf Steiner did not know what they were talking about; or that St John the Divine was a git for mucking up an otherwise nice safe magical system. 😉
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Sol Ascendans - The Website of Alex Sumner 
Black Swan
Black Swan, starring Natalie Portman
There is obvious dualistic symbolism throughout the film – for example, Natalie Portman spends most of the film wearing white clothings, while Mila Kunis wears dark. However with the greatest respect to the Frater who suggested it to me, Black Swan is a perfect example of how not to integrate light and dark, yin and yang into ones personality. The way of the initiate is that of Balance, i.e. the Middle Pillar. One makes use of both mercy and severity as the need arises but without ever becoming in thrall to either. This is not the method by which Portman’s character is able to portray both the Swan Queen and the Black Swan (Hidden spoiler alert). She is suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder (“split personality”).
However, instead of Qabalistic symbolism the film is more of an example of a “magical realistic” type of filming. As such, the film needs to be analysed at a metafictional level in order to really understand what is going on: although the director over-eggs the pudding by becoming more and more obvious with the visual clues as the film progresses towards its climax. One of the clever touches though was featured earlier on. Whilst Portman is practicing her ballet, she is filmed in a rehearsal room with a large mirror. However, the camera is not seen in the mirror! The obvious reason for this is that it is an example of trick photography. However – could it not have a deeper meaning – a visual metaphor for the idea that the mirror does not reflect reality?
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Tagged as Black Swan, DVD, Natalie Portman