magispiegel: The fact that you mention, that it is just a matter of making slight querky changes to the petty ego…(doing this, doing that etc.) and then Kaboomm!, Realisation! Godhead!… you have made contact with your ‘Magickal Will’!, Erm. No. The attainment of the Magickal Will is an occult process, it is an alchemical process…it is more than just, doing and unfolding your self/nature/inner child in a Liber Ozian way.

There are a number of elementary errors in your reasoning that have led you to both your faulty observation and to your faulty conclusion, which I will describe for you.

Your first error is your assumption that if something is simple to describe, or simple to understand, then it must be simple to do. This is a fallacy. I could, within the space of an hour, give you a pretty clear understanding of how an airplane works and how its major systems function, but if you went up and tried to fly one on your own armed with just that knowledge you would die. Similarly, if you went straight out and tried to build one your logical error would become immediately clear to you.

Yet, such an understanding would nevertheless give you an idea of your goal as you embark on the path of learning to do either of these things which will help keep you on track. If you try to design an airplane, for instance, without the knowledge that you are ultimately going to have to stick a 300 lb engine in the nose then you’re going to be designing some pretty strangely behaving birds.

I have already given you two examples of Crowley doing exactly what I am doing here, stating plainly and simply what the nature of (in this case) KCHGA is. I can understand you not wanting to believe me, and even though you have little interest in Thelema your presence here suggests that you have some interest in Crowley, so maybe it would help you to believe him instead of me.

Your second error is in your argument that you do not believe the true will can be described prosaically (I’m correcting your other error here) because it is not itself prosaic. This is a meaningless and circular statement that can be restated simply as “I believe the true will is something mysterious”. If I say “I can explain something previously believed to be mysterious in simple and plain terms”, you cannot sensibly counter that with “no you can’t, because I believe it to be mysterious”. If you really wanted to give a serious argument as to why it cannot be described plainly, you would have to give convincing reasons as to why that should be the case. In order to give those reasons, you’d have to explain simply what it’s nature is, and why it cannot be described so simply. Do you see the trap your reasoning is keeping you in? For you to convincing argue that I cannot describe the true will simply you would have to describe it simply in order to demonstrate that argument. The fact that you either cannot or will not do this means your entire argument here can be reworded simply as “I just refuse to believe you, Erwin, I will not believe you and that’s that”. You must be able to understand how this approach is not going to convince many people.

Your third error is your complete failure to understand the phenomenon that I have been describing. You characterise it as “making slight querky [sic] changes to the petty ego” but it is hard for me to conceive of something further away from what I’ve actually been saying. The reason you have failed to understand this – and I freely admit that this is an inherent problem in the communication process that I am, without too much hope, attempting to lessen – is that you are not sufficiently advanced in the practice to have had the relevant experience to connect to the words that you are reading. For many people, this will not be a significant problem, since they can take the words at face value, but for somebody like you who actually thinks they do know something about the subject, it is a problem.

Most people can tell you that the practices in, say, Liber E and Liber III, are to develop control over action, speech and thought. What many people do not grasp for a long time is that the primary purpose of those documents is to show you how those things function in your own being, and how they get in the way of what you are trying to accomplish. Thus, the practices themselves reveal to you something of the nature of the problem that you are trying to solve. When you reflect that without a clear understanding of the problem, you are extremely unlikely to ever solve it, you can appreciate how important this is. This is precisely why the keeping of a magical record is stressed so heavily. Your problem here is that you have not undertaken such practices – or have not undertaken them sufficiently rigorously – to enable you to perceive the nature of the subject matter you have to work with, and this is why you cannot comprehend what I am saying. You think the problem is something other than what it is, so you cannot recognise it in my words. Again, this wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t for the fact that you believe you are already beyond that point and that you don’t have to go back and do it properly. I strongly encourage you to do this.

Your fourth error is one I have already described, and that is your need to believe that spiritual attainment, “Godhead” as you call it, is something mysterious, and wonderful, and sublime. There is a reason for this. Most people will be familiar with the idea, commonly seen in children, that if you had such and such a thing, you’d never want anything again: “Get me this for my birthday, Mom, and I’ll never ask for anything ever again!” Most people get over this idea relatively quickly, simply as a result of generating income and acquiring a lot more stuff, and finding that it fails to satisfy. The physical wants then get replaced by something a little less tangible: “If only I worked with animals instead of an office, I’d be happy! If only I could be my own boss, I’d be happy! If only I had a better wife, I’d be happy! If only I could win the lottery and retire, I’d be happy!” Some people with a little insight also begin to see through this after a while. But then they turn to spirituality. The new house, car, spouse, job, lifestyle is replaced by “godhead”, or “enlightenment”. “If only I was enlightened, then I’d be happy!” The more astute amongst you will see a pattern forming here – as the great Fr. Harris would say, “Can you tell what it is yet?”

The fact is that people are not happy, and in their current state they have a need to believe that there is something out there which can change that, something that can transform their lives and take away all their pain. It’s the same thing that gives rise to the Christian concept of Heaven – “It doesn’t matter how much I suffer on this Earth, since I know when I die I’m going to go to this magical place where I’ll never be miserable again!” Similarly, most occultists (and other religious types) have this romantic view of what enlightenment, godhead, union with god, nirvana, call it what you will, is like. Even if they can never hope to achieve this, they have a need to believe it is out there in order to come to terms with their current predicament, to retain some little shred of hope that this is not what reality is really like. The fact is that they – and you – simply refuse to consider that the real nature of attainment may be something totally different. They refuse to think about the idea that perhaps attainment will not make all your problems go away. They simply do not have the emotional maturity or courage to consider the fact that maybe there is not something “out there” that can make all their problems disappear, that can take away their pain. This is precisely why discussions such as the ones you’ve seen here upset them so much. They would rather accept attainment as a forever impossible dream rather than face up to the possibility it is something other than what they think it is.

You talk about “making slight querky [sic] changes to the petty ego”, but this approach of yours is exactly what that is. It is your ego that suffers and feels the pain, it is the ego that yearns for this heavenly enlightenment, and when you pander to that ego’s desires in this respect you are merely compounding the problem and miring yourself further and further in darkness. All the “traditional” occult approaches to attainment operate in this way, by seeking to cure the ego of its ills, to ease that yearning for spiritual relief that the ego suffers – all the talk about the ego is not matched by either the theory or the practice. These approaches are 100% precisely backwards.

Here is something to consider. All these folks who yearn for this kind of enlightenment are so sure that they know what it is, yet not one of them has achieved it. Why then, are they so sure? From what part of reality does this picture they have originate? The answer is obvious – it comes purely from their minds, and is nothing more than a wish-phantasm.

It is not even necessary to go this far to demonstrate the flaw in your position. If you can accept that there are no “real” gods, angels or devils out there, what then do you think the practice of magick operates on? Purely on the mind, on the magician’s being. If the nature of this being can be described prosaically (for instance, by medical science) then the effects of this practice can clearly also be so described.