Some months ago I presented this image and have had some backlash energy among the more conservative set. My apologies. Therefore, I here append the background information and some scholarship. It is, in fact, a making of ancient magic and thus well-documented in libraries.
I was down at the O.T.O. the other night taking in a gorgeous lecture about the Thelemite goddess Babalon. Evidently She traces her roots back to Inanna of the Uruk period of Mesopotamia, a favorite culture of many in Hermetics. This goddess is presented astride a multi-headed lion on the Thoth deck’s Trump XI, entitled LUST.
Readers familiar with this blog, curated by THE SPIRITS, will recognize the common refrain LUST WAS INVOLVED. This came in as part of IN LIEU OF the magick of Thelema, a gorgeous upwelling of the Earth power of Eros, and refers, in my work, to the Solomonic spirit King BELETH, whom they have dubbed LUST.
The spirits enumerated and described in my favorite grimoire, The Lesser Key of Solomon, were worked with extensively by Aleister Crowley and are part of the basic operating system of his religion, Thelema, and the energy work of the Ordo Templi Orientis, or O.T.O.
I am not a mainstream member of the O.T.O. or really that conversant with Thelema. I have spent most of my magical career in the predecessor Rosicrucian tradition, the Golden Dawn. I always say that you can’t buy The Lesser Key of Solomon but you can rent it. The assistance of other wizards is almost a sine qua non for A FELLOW LODGE COW and we don’t even have to show up to the Rite. Thus I pay full lodge dues to the local chapter of the O.T.O. and attend all of their public events that my schedule allows, without being in tight formation in the pack. It is not that it is wrong — I have done this quite considerably and it is how Rosicrucian lodges construct our divinatory and operative magical worlds; it is that ours is a formal and complicated magic requiring much time and study. Basically, you pretty much have to get a college degree in a particular style of Hermetics, and while I revere Thelema, there is something to be said for staying the course when the magic works.
The monthly pretty well mandatory attendance at the Gnostic mass no doubt instills a continued reverence for eroticism in all its many beauties, we opine, the capacity for human thought processes and not just sublimation for astral travel. This ceremony is open to the public and free. Please attend and take advantage of WE KNEW THIS WAS COMING.
Plus, the yoni is on display at the Gnostic Mass, which includes a sacrament of bread and wine.
However, I can’t help but notice that when Crowley introduced himself in The Book of Thoth, he gave his dossier as an Adept of the Golden Dawn who then went on to create his own magick.
As is customary with Adepti of the Golden Dawn.
This configuration is widely known in Thelema and quite common as Thelemic Golden Dawn, a balanced and perfect position for those who have been dreampt by the Spirits.
A few evocations ago I seriously noticed Crowley’s assignment of the elemental grades of the Golden Dawn in the Headless Ritual, which he recommended prior to evocation. I just read it from the books. That works okay. To that end, I have been trying to get the grades of the old classic Golden Dawn finished and not just plink about in a limited number of familiar magics, but a meander it has been. To that end, I have been putting on the black robe and black and white nemyss, as a point of honor, every day for a few minutes.
ALWAYS HAVING FUN WITH DOWELS.
The robe of John Michael Greer’s Cabalistic Golden Dawn work that has been extensively WOWed is a white one, and trends toward linen in the end.
Those of you familiar with predecessor traditions will note that the black robe of the NEOPHYTE is a graduation robe. In earlier centuries, when a scholar took a degree, they put on a robe for graduation then wore it as a scholar’s or teacher’s uniform forever. Old-fashioned European boarding schools often required these robes to be worn at all times in the common areas of campus.
Just check out Harry Potter and see the school robes. They are actually traditional European boarding school or college robes.
Thus the Golden Dawn links back to the tradition of the university and not just the Catholic Church in its monastery habits.
ANGELS.
The white robe of John Michael Greer’s magic, which I call GENGHIS KHAN, is familiar to anyone who has poked their heads into the grimoires. Almost invariably the robe recommended is of white linen, which was used in Egypt but also among the pre-Christian pagans of, say, Scandinavia. They worked in white linen as well. These old deities, pushed into the past and cursed LIONIZED by Christianity were considered demons.
Thus I have been tricked into demons by my clothes.
Now, coming back to the image presented, and, again, we presume that most people reading this blog are Thelemites and conversant with all of these old magical practices, the trick of a woman unveiling her privates to a strange man has a number of precedents that are preeminently magical.
First is the account of the Egyptian sun god Ra falling into a deep depression until Hathor removes her clothing and dances around him nude, showing off her vulva, which makes him laugh. When Demeter’s mourning for Persephone causes her to neglect the crops, Baubo unveils her yoni and dances around, Demeter laughs, and resumes making the crops grow.
Jake Stratton-Kent refers to the practice in Ancient Greece as an apotropaic (protective) one similar to the Celtic sheelynagig, wherein the sight of the birth canal is an eerie threat of bad luck if the woman is messed with!
The proximate occasion of this post was celebratory. I had purchased Dr. Jeremy Weiss’s beautiful volume Vulvamancy: A Guide to Yoni Divination and Magic. Buy the book here
Now here let me do a little stumping for my wizard crush who is also very nice to me. Dr. Jeremy was reared by wonderful observant Jewish parents who put him through the entire rigamarole of the Jewish education, a slightly better version of the MAR-MON education that I put myself through at a similar age, rising in the wee hours to study ancient magic, that is to say, the scriptures. He then went through medical training, including training at Harvard and Columbia, and had a great career as a physician, from which he is now retired. Thus this root doctor’s appellation “Dr. Jeremy” is a two-fer in the magical world and has been of assistance in my career in health care, in that I have the JEWISH MAGIC of medicine available in the underworld.
Dr. Jeremy devotes considerable time and EXPEN$E to tracking down recondite magical sources and making the whole shebang available in volumes accessible in cost to the average schmo.
Research is a fine art. It would cost thousands of dollars and thousands of hours to prepare this magical educational material, and its possession would enable practitioners to effect considerable outcome, particularly in mental magic of the type now practiced with considerable effect on unknowing people. Dr. Jeremy’s work takes on difficult subjects germane to the scene, packs them densely with not just information but magic spells, and presents the entire subject at a lively clip with lots of punch and a distinctive style. If you do not love Jewish magic, you should still read Dr. Jeremy’s work for the beauty of the research.
So, in an uprush of gorgeous earth energy, when I received this volume in the mail, I whipped up an old poem into an artistic blog post complete with an image of the yoni that anyone in the Marseille tarot, which he teaches and works with at Artisan tarot, could use as a yoni divination.
Dr. Jeremy’s magic has been driving me to get my Norse work in as complete as I desire. I studied Anglo-Saxon and read Beowulf and other works in that ancient Germanic language in college. When John Michael Greer did what most Golden Dawn occultists do, explore the old gods of England, I turned my nose up at all that Celtic stuff, being myself almost wholly descended from the English on my mother’s side, and thus Saxon. The idea that some would “Saxon out” in Druidry had no doubt occurred to JMG et al., but the work of Saxon “druidry” as a heathen spiritual construct was not yet as available twenty years ago as it is now. The combination of much work of the Cabala with an intense interest in Norse paganism — much less a giant pile of Hermetic lodge work — looks an awful lot like the soul of a Holocaust Jew.
Who knows?
Then there is the question of my ex-husband, Dr. SHAMUSA. There are many signs in support of the idea that he was a Holocaust Jew. Perhaps also a 19th-century Kabbalist healing the Holocaust. Golden Dawn tunes into the 19th century. Perhaps assisting the reincarnation of his wife. Who knows? He is nice to me.
It is also likely that I am a Kabbalist who died in the Holocaust. A Jewish woman with no children is likely a male soul that would be dismantled by childbearing.
I understand that the best approach for a person like me is to do as much Norse work as I see fit, and do what I am doing, which is social justice. At the end of the day, the system is driving many like my mother’s family into poverty and soldiering, guns are for sale everywhere, the rich are being extremely destructive of America and I find myself just interested in a bit of SCURVY savvy literary criticism and absolute support of the higher intentions of heathenry. These are just some thoughts and not to be misconstrued as an uninteresting spiritual life.
DEALS.
She’s not going to be Krystjan.
I will grant you that there is a Christian gizmo in Hermetics as well entrée into Christianity, but I have chosen to forego the R.R. et A.C. in favor of following GENGHIS KHAN’s thought processes about the magic(k), which, for me, results in a partial repatriation into Judaism, and that is real, and the entire system does continue into the contemporary stripe and involves the Saxon side of things. I am thinking aloud here about a magic that fucking works, and how to keep it.
Hermetics provides extremely competent magic for opening the psychic centers but it cannot deal with what happens when you open the soul of a Holocaust Jew like so many involved with the Hermetic Cabala. So John Michael Greer set up a system for dealing with the outcome. Much ballyhooed by everyone. It is easier to gang up on us, juice us, and dismantle our old souls than to deal with what we are. OR DUCK. So there.
The paganism of one’s body goes nicely with the Judaism of one’s soul and should not be neglected. PAIMON. Latinos function differently, and I am Shul.
The MAR-MON world, with its ancestor portal the temple and its genealogical record of the entire human race, deals nicely with such MOUNDS.
And last, but not least, a Scandinavian RECTORY would consider the featured image to be a death image. Current Swedish Archaeology is kind enough to allow many articles to be read on the internet free of charge. A cursory review of the articles would reveal that it was common practice in pre-Christian Scandinavia, which did have some inhumation burial, and most often grave goods, for a man to be laid to rest in battle gear, whereas women were buried in rowboats or in stone formations laid around the body in the shape of a boat. Thus we must consider the image of this couple besporting themselves in a rowboat to actually be lying in death as lovers.
ODIN IS INVOLVED.
Building the Underworld 