You can't learn to be a sorcerer.
It's contrary to most everything else we pursue in the human sphere.
You can only unlearn the things that are keeping you from being one, after observing how others have succeeded.
It can't be overstated how supremely vital this mindset is. Thinking in terms of cleaning away rather than building up...ourselves or others.
Most everything we're taught in life, by other people, is based around the building-up or improvement outlook. Either that or a cooperation/maintinance mindset.
Intent is what is most important to a sorcerer, their life and breath as it were. And anything that is blocking that connection has to go. Has to recede and fade.
26 Comments
> You can't learn to be a sorcerer.
I was poking around in one of the "magic" forums, answering a question sent to me electronically, about a book by Allister Crowley.
I had to tell them, he was a complete fake and it ought to be obvious from reading the book they were featuring.
Someone asked if I read his other books?
That person believed you could learn magic by building up a bigger inventory. Cram yourself full of facts.
I got cremated in that forum because absolutely no one there had ever seen any real magic. And so they felt justified to become angry. I suppose in the back of their mind they believe magic is fake anyway, and who the hell is some random guy to tell them the truth about Allister.
I couldn't even convince them to come over here and take a look. In fact, they didn't really want to learn magic. They wanted to be like Allister, known for magic, making weird poses to mystify people and get attention.
Magical Clowns I suppose, is their goal.
The same happens in the Castaneda world. People read every book they can get their hands on, including books by total phonies like Miguel and Armando.
We had 2 very recently who believed they could run around meeting "sorcerers" like Juan the book dealer and Armando, and that was bonus points indicating they were advanced in their knowledge.
They don't realize, that does damage!
Go look at Lidotska's "Pinhead" if you want to understand what excessive inventory does with intent. We had a 6 sentence discussion of pinhead in group chat, resulting in him materializing in Lidotska's dark space.
Then someone posted the "yellow eye" guy's web page. He's selling some god awful ego driven form of yoga, and his blurb about the yellow eye calls it an intensely amazing thing to see!
The implication is, he'll teach you what to do to see it, and then you'll be highly evolved when you do!
But it's one of a billion things you can see, and not particularly important. If I saw that, I wouldn't even post about it in here. I see too many things each night, and singling out one thing is misleading to others.
Which means, that "teacher" can't actually see that on demand. If he could, he'd see the other 1 billion things and realize that first one was kind of stupid.
He's lying to his followers even about seeing that dubiouis sight.
But there's his smiling face on his Kriya yoga web page.
Maybe he saw it once, sort of, and elaborated it to match what he'd read about it?
Some Yogananda inventory item?
Not only can you NOT learn sorcery, but if you put much effort into that, you'll NEVER learn it.
Which is why some in here have been going to other sorts of subreddits, such as those associated with video games that have a magic theme.
The reception there is much better because they aren't filled with the wrong inventory.
The sad theory is, the Castaneda fans have ruined their chances to learn, so it's a waste of time to seek them out.
Probably one of the most important realizations along the path of learning sorcery is that it's the natural condition for mankind.
It's automatic. But we got brainwashed.
I suppose a good analogy would be if your mom stuck a golf ball in your hand as a child, and forced you to clench it with your fist every second of your life.
And you grew to middle age, still gripping the golf ball. But so did everyone else.
At some point you struggle endlessly to learn to let go of it. When you find out it takes 3 hours a day of trying to do it, you complain about how hard it is to learn to let go of that golf ball.
Then one day it drops to the floor, and you feel as if you have finally discovered real magic!
Until you get used to it, and realize, you didn't accomplish anything particularly difficult.
Except that, now you know HOW to let go of things. And there's a bunch more you could also do without.
As don Juan advised Carlos in one of Carlos' final 3 books, which were designed to be last minute instructions, he, don Juan, was like an empty tube leading to infinity.
You can't learn to be an empty tube leading to infinity.
But you can become one.
I could add an amusing anecdote to this.
A former private classmate of mine read about the empty tube to infinity.
So he set up a web page, to teach people how to be empty tubes to infinity.
For cash of course.
All the work Carlos put into him, and he didn't understand even a tiny bit of it.
All he saw was an opportunity to trick people out of their money.
Thanks for taking the time to write all this. I think most aren't at the stage of real change...just want to wear the magician's clothing and put on a stage show.
At its root, it seems to me, it's about one-upsmanship...just wanting to have something over your peers. Crowley, along with the whole western magical tradition is rooted in acting...acting like a magician.
I've hunted for the gem in western magic traditions...I remember at one point coming to the conclusion, "Ok...maybe I've read enough...maybe I'll just try practicing and observe the results." So, I learned the lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram. Ok, so I'll trace a shape that has no significance for me...ok, so there are magical words to say in each direction (I wonder if I'm facing true north)...AGLA?...I've heard two of the other names before...let's look up what AGLA means....oh...an acronym?! Really?! Aight, I'm out.
It's all doilies...increasingly elaborate and ornate waste tacked on and on...
I used to be a freemason at one point...I think all this bullshit is all to simply convince oneself that one is making progress...but it's neverending...until you're "teaching" the learned crap to others...at that point one couldn't help but feel that contrived sense of superiority...
Me: "Now I'm the master, teaching."
Mostly untainted person: "Of what?"
Me: "How's that?"
One thing that resounded from the Castaneda books was that stalking was waaay more important than dreaming...I think we're encultured to deny stalking...don't critically reflect on your decisions.
After saying all the other stuff is crap, I'll take the opposite point of view.
Western magic is largely Enochian. Enochian magic is Kabballah.
The Kabballah people seem to have been doing the same thing we are in here. They found a way to shut off the internal dialogue, looked for the "divine light", or whatever they wanted to call it, and then used it to manifest various things like heaven, hell, demons, or angles.
The presumed technique is to put your head between your feet, force off all thoughts, and also force off feelings and such.
Surely that works!
The light they sought was raw energy, seen on a horizon. The horizon can be your eyelids if your eyes are closed.
So the Enochian magicians did in fact have real magic.
But then, what they did with it was sort of sinister. They spun their own history around it, and added predictions of the future to control the population.
Where they got the predictions is unknown to me, but according to Kabballah tradition, you just need one of the head demons. They can either tell the future, or make it go the way they claim, due to living for billions of years.
I suppose Enochian magic comes down to the Book of Abramelin at the key point in history. And that book works! You can in fact get yourself a demon guide, and an angel guide.
I had them! Fairy and Minx.
I don't know if their method for gaining those helpers would work, but I can't see anything wrong with it. As long as you can get silent. Which they could.
Their technique of a 6 month ritual involving self-denial and charity, is roughly analogous to the complicate rituals to prepare "little smoke". Unnecessary rituals I might add, but ones which would surely invoke intent.
Both rituals are not-doings, since nothing can come from them, using cause and effect alone.
Then there's the modern versions of that Enochian tradition. In fact, its not impossible to have their point of view, and get help from intent.
Intent is an equal opportunity helper. It just likes to help you on your path of discovery. I suppose the universe likes that sort of activity because it becomes more aware of itself.
I just doubt the western magic gets help from intent very often, and surely not on a reliable, repeatable basis.
They focused on the what too much, and not enough on the how.
Regarding useless rituals, by executing them for a long time you detach from society and learn to defend from societal shame. This allows to accept new things that would previously be filtered out because having and believing them risks detachment from society. Lone walks in dark far from city lights are rituals of detachment as well.
Physics analogy: you cannot collect "charge "while inside the "Faraday ice pail" of society, as it dissipates immediately while you are surrounded.
That's true about rituals. But you have to avoid getting sucked into a new social group who likes to talk about rituals.
Cholita is the Queen of rituals. She even cracks her bedroom door the precise same amount each day. It's part of some spell that hasn't finished yet.
Very on point in my opinion.
I've been so ignorant in the past to dedicate time to 'wearing the magicians clothes' and blindly hoping for real results.
I've never seen any results until now.
I'll be completely honest, it's been one of the scariest(at times), strengthening, confusing(but with some strange clarity), and most rewarding things I've ever done.
Probably more impactful than even the hermetics I was addicted to.
Great words as always..
I'd be very curious as to how that was 'taught'.
Thanks for the laugh.
Someone posted about that a while back, but it seemed to be rehashed Hindu techniques.
It could be that this particular person was the biggest con artist in private classes.
I say that because he never had anything in mind but a book deal and earning money from sorcery.
There were others like that too, but when Carlos died, they became angry and dropped the whole thing.
This person spun lies around the death, and designed them as an excuse for why you should follow him now.
He even found an excuse not to follow Reni.
In private classes, Carlos pulled his wife or girlfriend away from him. According to Cholita, he didn't mind.
I feel some level of similarity and respect for Hinduism, short of the caste system.
At least Carlos saw it in him and attempted to 'save' her from his influence. To not to let her be influenced by his greed and masturbation.
Edited. I forgot about that dirty caste system
It's pretty difficult to argue they didn't have powerful sorcerers at one point.
I'm unclear on the story. I know only what Cholita told me, and if she believes I'm interested in what she's saying, she stops talking out of spite.
I believe his wife went on to locate a "Rinpoche", and have sex with him. Which caused the Rinpoche to be dethroned. Literally. He sat on a little throne in a woman's home, and people came to give him gold coins and jewels.
Another middle aged woman had "discovered" him. And was promoting him, until she decided he wasn't "pure enough".
Cholita slept in the room next to his for a while.
It's not uncommon for women to be the ones to introduce new gurus to the general population.
That says a lot right there.
Also, I've read that story in one of your posts.
Why does cholita 'hate' you so much. Is she not on some level 'beyond' being spoiled and would be able to see what you've provided for her?
Not to be malicious toward her but I feel like her ability should come with a level of clarity. Speaking from anything i may think I know.
Go read about Zuleica or Josefina. She's like them.
I don't think anyone doing sorcery ever grows "beyond" their personality. They remain as crummy as ever, forever.
It's not an Asian hazing social order where false promises are made about how you are "transformed" in order to maximize followers. That's the substitute they give for magic.
That sort of thinking caused Howard Lee to denounce Carlos on his death. His Daoist socialization.
Neither does it result in permanent bliss, the sales pitch of yoga. We had one or two pass through here thinking it was all about bliss and joy.
It's just a technology. Being a computer expert doesn't make you a nice guy.
(Usually it's the opposite).
I guess I was thinking more about the whole silence thing. Figuring at some point it would calm them down a bit.
Cholita can't get silent. However, women don't have to.
They can shift their assemblage point so far it doesn't matter that they can't get silent. If you learn darkroom gazing well, you'll discover that position of the assemblage point also.
It's better if women learn to be silent (as La Gorda did), but they have so much talent it's not necessary.
Here's Zuleica and Zoila, two of the most powerful in don Juan's group. It's from the first time they met Carlos, in Eagle's Gift. Hopefully it convinces people new to here, to give up Asian ideas about transforming your basic personality.
We cannot. If you understood Asia, you'd realize how hollow that claim is.
It's a false promise, like putting a bunch of wax candy in the window of the temple to lure children to come in.
From Eagle's Gift:
Another woman was sitting in one of the armchairs. The first woman sat down on a small
straw mat on the floor and rested her back against the other chair. Then she put her thighs against
her breasts, exposing herself completely. She was not wearing underpants. I stared at her
dumbfounded.
In an ugly gruff tone, the woman asked me why I was staring at her vagina. I did not know
what to say except to deny it. She stood up and seemed about to hit me. She demanded that I tell
her that I had gaped at her because I had never seen a vagina in my life. I felt guilty. I was
thoroughly embarrassed and also annoyed at having been caught in such a situation.
The woman asked don Juan what kind of Nagual I was if I had never seen a vagina. She
began repeating this over and over, yelling it at the top of her voice. She ran around the room
and stopped by the chair where the other woman was sitting. She shook her by the shoulders
and, pointing at me, said that I was a man who had never seen a vagina in his whole life. She
laughed and taunted me.
I was mortified. I felt that don Juan should have done something to save me from that
humiliation. I remembered that he had told me these women were quite mad. He had
understated it; this woman was ready for an institution. I looked at don Juan for support and
advice. He looked away. He seemed to be equally at a loss, although I thought I caught a
malicious smile, which he quickly hid by turning his head.
The woman lay down on her back and pulled up her skirt, and commanded me to look to my
heart's content instead of sneaking glances. My face must have been red, judging by the heat in
my head and neck. I was so annoyed that I almost lost control. I felt like bashing her head in.
The woman who was sitting in the chair suddenly stood up and grabbed the other one by the
hair and made her stand up in one single motion, seemingly with no effort at all. She stared at
me through half-closed eyes, bringing her face no more than two or three inches from mine. She
smelled surprisingly fresh.
In a high-pitched voice, she said that we should get down to business.
Note "half-closed eyes". Using top half of back of eyelids as "darkroom" surface, isn't it?
You can use it that way. I do in daytime gazing.
Fancy shows up on my eyelid on rare occasions.
But she's faithfully inside my cell phone. Little smoke offered that too.
Given 5 minutes and a clear sky so the sun is visible, I can find her in there.
It's quite a shock when I vaguely see her, think that's nuts, and she suddenly turns her head and smiles at me.
She gets into fights with Bob down there. I have no idea why. I keep seeing them wrestling.
Let me put this very concisely. Since women have periods which push their assemblage point all over the place monthly, it never gets quite as fixed in place as it does for men.
And I suppose their womb gives them more options for moving it, than men have.
So they can manage to move it, even if they can't get silent.
Men need to get silent, to get it unstuck.
But the silence itself does not move the assemblage point.
The attention moves it.
Women's attention goes out, like a funnel, pulling everything in.
It's like using your peripheral vision to flood your perception, and help loosen your assemblage point.
Men's attention zeros in, like a laser. So it's very easy for them to get trapped on a pointless detail.
Result: women are talented, and can get away with skipping all of the hard work.
But they tend to give up or go off on a tangent.
Or go bat shit insane Haha
The insanity will be hereditary, not caused by the sorcery.
Zulieca and Zoila suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, as does Cholita.
Her mother had it also. It's a faulty wiring in the brain, and is not caused by trauma, or any other social behavior.
They used to believe that, but these days they take a more mechanical view of it. It's probably caused by the horizontal brain wiring going too far. So that unrelated ideas trigger a single thought.
Insanity comes with a super noisy internal dialogue.
It can't be caused by learning to be silent. That's the opposite direction.
One horrible thing about Asian philosophy, which westerners never quite understand, is that 1000 year old eggs, are not 1000 years old.
Tai Chi is not the grand ultimate.
It's marketing hype. Asia runs on marketing hype, and copying.
But when you copy, you have to increase the marketing hype, to distinguish your product.
As westerners, we are vulnerable to the marketing hype. We'r'e savy to our how crap. We know the TV preacher doesn't actually talk to God.
But we don't have that practical understanding of Asia, so we get polluted with their bad philosophy, lured by the promise of the supernatural, which they pretty much never deliver.
In the case of Buddhism, the major hype is that it makes you a better person.
It doesn't!
Zen masters are famous for being bad to their wives.
Or for having other serious personality flaws they never fix. You have to ask the older monks, and only when a younger, "master" has taken over. Then you can find out what a total bastard the Zen master really was.
Yogis are huge perverts most of the time, exploiting students endlessly.
In India, they're simply outright drug addicts.
Rinpoches (Tibetan?) sit on little thrones taking gold coins and jewels from followers, and fucking the women when they can get away with it.
Daoists grow opium, and probably still use it, trying to learn to find "the Dao".
The simplicity of this resounds with such potency of energy.
It's not surprising culture doesn't facilitate this...thankfully culture can be released and will fall away also. :)
Thank you for this message.
Beautifully accurate and well said. You should sticky this post.
Edited
An even simpler way to phrase the essence of this, from A Separate Reality, by CC:
"...a man becomes everything by becoming nothing."
The hardest part I have found has been removing personal history.
As an adult with responsibilities and everything hanging on feeding your family people place way too much importance upon what your resume says.
When I was younger moving around without belongings and even changing identifying aspects of my personality was a much easier task.
I find right now I treat people on a need to know basis, if you don’t need to know a certain aspect of my history it doesn’t exist.
Internal silence, is a breeze compared to stalking the entirety of society and it’s constant demands that you fit the mould...
even if you’re squeezing between the cracks.
We hold onto the world with our thoughts of all the things we have to do or want to do. Drop those, and we drop (stop) the world.
"No! No different. Only different in your mind. You must unlearn what you have learned."
Yoda
What you can learn in here is how to go about the various available tasks in sorcery, and then drop everything that is preventing your bodies from doing magic all on their own.
It's a trick, to get you to the tipping point where the tonal lets go and allows things to be as they truly are.